Yesterday I wrote about the BUG Aggro deck that won the WMCQ in Brazil, and I mentioned that I liked a lot of what it was doing, so I decided to take it for a spin today.
I’ve left most of it alone, but there were a couple changes I wanted to try. I cut the second Zameck Guildmage for a Skirsdag High Priest because it interacts very well with Rapid Hybridization and undying, and I added a third Rapid Hybridization and fourth Young Wolf to push that interaction. I cut a Snapcaster Mage and a Wolfir Avenger to support these changes. I’m not particularly sure that any of those changes are “right,” but that’s what I wanted to try.
Creatures (24)
- 1 Skirsdag High Priest
- 1 Snapcaster Mage
- 1 Evil Twin
- 4 Strangleroot Geist
- 4 Young Wolf
- 4 Dreg Mangler
- 4 Experiment One
- 1 Zameck Guildmage
- 4 Duskmantle Seer
Lands (23)
Spells (13)
Sideboard
In this match I really like the Rancor, haste creatures, undying, and counterspells, and Golgari Charms from the sideboard have always impressed me against Esper. I’m not sure what else there is to say about it.
This felt like exactly the kind of matchup my opponent was looking to play against—a deck small creatures that can’t really get through his defenses and not enough good answers to his planeswalkers. I’m pretty sure I won the second game because of how my opponent played it.
It’s possible that I could have won the first game by playing the turn before he used Sorin’s ultimate differently and then maybe stolen the match, which is a good sign. The deck has enough play that it can steal matches in difficult situations, but this is still not a deck it’d like to play against.
I’m pretty sure this matchup is very good, but playing around the possible Restoration Angel because I wasn’t confident enough about what he was playing cost me game 1 (I lost the topdeck battle when we both had nothing, of course), and my draw was horrible in game 3.
That was an interesting match. I think game 1 had a reasonable amount of play to it just in having the discipline not to attack. Game 2 had some similar turns, and it’s nice to be able to win with a four-card hand. I think that match mostly confirmed what I said above about the cards I like against control.
I’m still not sure how I feel about cards like Zameck Guildmage and Skirsdag High Priest, and I didn’t get to play any of the matchups where Rapid Hybridization would be good, although I really like how it works with the deck in theory. I’m also not sure about Dreg Mangler. There are a lot of creatures in Standard that it doesn’t match up well against, but I do like having more hasted attackers.
Thanks for watching,
@samuelhblack on Twitter