Got some gameplay in! Always exciting these days.
Aaaaaand I lost lol. But it was a good game with lots of back and forth, my lines were a lot better, had a couple of trials of new cards and to be fair I was up against
Animar, Soul of Elements eldrazi and
The Scarab God so those are slightly challenging on two different axes: sharing a tribe makes some of our effects less impactful. and Animar just has an incredible ability to significantly reduce costs and accelerate board states, so outvaluing the deck is a tough proposition.
Essentially I ran out of cards in hand, went into topdeck mode, and couldn't get myself into a win condition, With Animar reducing costs heavily my
Rhystic Study wasn't paying out, and I drew into a
Patriarch's Bidding early game, and with some gas from
Ashnod's Altar had a nice little bleed off with
Vengeful Dead, I just couldn't follow up with enough board presence to capitalise.
I got a chance to trial out
Empty the Laboratory and had kind of hilarious results. Literally topdecked two tokens for the first two cards off my library in
Diregraf Colossus and
Death Baron. It seems fine, not always a card to cast, sometimes one to pitch, but with some of the new tech coming in in
Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver and
Headless Rider I think it's going to be a pretty nice tool to have in the shed myself.
Ravenous Rotbelly I got to try out too, and it's fine, but really needs a way to repeatedly abuse it. Without that, I don't think it's going to be worth hitting any of these variants. I did not have that this game, and being able to trade 3 tokens for 3 eldrazi beaters at end game was nice, it really isn't enough against that sort of deck as a one time effect. I think I will probably drop this one, but, at the same time I do want to get some play in with it alongside a better support network: being able to loop it with
Repository Skaab and some reanimation, go ham with
Mikaeus, the Unhallowed or just poop tokens with
Headless Rider or
Wilhelt, the Rotcleaver breaks the parity of it somewhat, so it might be more profitable than my limited experience has led me to believe.
I saw a fair gamut of cards that I want to think about cutting though, so despite the loss it sort of makes it easier to know where to go from here to make the cuts needed for VOW cards (which I've yet to pick up: my LGS is running prereleases this weekend now that covid restrictions have eased a little, so I should be able to pick up the commons and uncommons I need early next week too once people have bought trade fodder in and his storefront is a little more flush).