Had a rather interesting game earlier today, which was a pile of nontrivial decision points and trying to manoeuvre through an archenemy situation from the point
Skybind landed until the game ended. Time to write it up in needless detail! Did I screw any of these choices? Possibly! If so feel free to let me know.
The start's pretty solid, if slow - turn one
Top followed up by a
Rampant Hawk. I fish for action with Top as I collect mana with Hawk, and this goes on for a couple turns. At one point the only person who has more lands than me has his
Ravos out, and I swing the Hawk and hope for the best. They choose to not trade off their five drop commander for my two drop bird, and I'm tied for most lands at the table. I hit the first decision point - three mana up,
Expedition Map in hand, no land drop made this turn, what do? I opt for the Map, which gets cracked for a
Serra's Sanctum. No extra land fetching in sight, and this is the best rate of return for a single tutor. Daxos finally emerges turn five, only to get followed up with a
Sphere of Safety and
Karmic Justice double salvo soon thereafter. This buys me a little extra wiggle room, as
Syr Gwyn is getting quite fed with various equipment pieces and beefy swingers. The tax makes some of them go somewhere else.
Top fishing turns up an
Enlightened Tutor, resulting in another decision point. There's a
True Conviction in hand, waiting for a chunky board to heal back up. The Sphere has stemmed some bleeding, but Gwyn's ramped enough to be able to pay for a mega flier to come through if desired. I ultimately settle on
Skybind as another defensive layer - aggressive flicking of the
Serra's Sanctum should outprice Gwyn's advances, and even if something does get through I can just flick it out. The other main contender was
Necropotence for pure dig potential, but my ~20 life discouraged me from pursuing this plan. Skybind lands to a mediocre setup, revs up extra bodies to grant extra Sphere protection, and eats an
Utter End. I didn't have enough mana up to
phase out in response, but I don't think it would have been a good use of the shield anyway. I Top-fish and locate
Big Ole Raz. Unfortunately, Skybind's demise means I can't go absolutely crazy, but having a
Serra's Sanctum that taps for eleven is a pretty good starting point. I chase Raz out, sac a dude, and Raz eats a
Pongify in response. Well crap. How much of my board do I eat and for what gain?
I go into the tank for a bit, trying to figure out how much to sac and what to get. I'm sitting on eight active, relatively scrawny swingers, and life totals are pretty respectable. Mana's scarce, apart from the eleven white off the Sanctum there's a solitary dual. Ultimately I emerge from the tank with a plan, sac two more guys and let Raz die. I fish out
Gilded Lotus,
Whift and
Flickering Ward, but only play the Lotus. The remaining six mana goes for the
True Conviction, as I figure I should buffer up my health to maximise my chances of walking away victorious. I blast full force into the guy who exiled the Skybind, who perishes and is not happy about it. The Lotus is up for the
TefProt if need be, with the extra dual dedicated to Top fishing. Gwyn shunts a pile of equipment onto Gwyn, just about exactsies pays for the Sphere and offers to kill me with commander damage, so I phase out. I go back to the Raz sacrifices and consider if there was something I could have done to avoid this. The True Conviction faux-alpha into the Skybind exiler was kind of necessary, as he was sitting on a
Pestilence that could have munched my relatively petite board if he so chose upon untapping. As such, the only realistic alternative line of action would have been to ship an extra dude for a
Swords or something, anticipating the Gwyn. Still, I'm ultimately shielded, even if it was kind of clunkily triggered.
Jhoira plops down
Stormtide Leviathan, which is not ideal.
I untap, let Whift rip, and get it countered. Huh. Countermagic is a rather uncommon occurrence in the meta, so I honestly was not expecting this. My original sculpted Raz line of Whift into repeated Flickering for massive experience and a swift table kill went out the window, as I can't even attack with anything. Thankfully top fishing turned up
Doom Whisperer, and there's an
Idyllic Tutor in my near future too. Jhoira's hand is still fat as hell after an
Overflowing Insight though, and Gwyn just paid for Sphere. As such, I figure I can delay for another turn, when I can pick up with Whisperer and Tutor in hand and likely get one of those lines through, and use up floating mana to go turbo wide and really outprice Gwyn for good (plus bank Sanctum white for next turn). This works, as Gwyn does not attack me. However, Jhoira gets the pieces together to seal the deal.
Karn's Temporal Sundering sends the Sphere packing, I die to the Leviathan and
Dominus of Fealty pecking me in the sea/sky, and Gwyn falls over to commander damage... from Gwyn, borrowed repeatedly by Dominus.
So ultimately did I punt? I honestly don't know. The written up line looks relatively tidy, and the choices feel justified. I probably should have started chasing Rampant Hawk out again at some point after I missed a couple land drops, but I was probably subconsciously spooked off it after the Hawk's near-death experience of potentially trading with Ravos. Still, it was an interesting game. Given how developed others at the table were, I didn't feel ahead enough of the board to deserve a full on 3v1 assault, especially once Skybind went down, but I guess ultimately my opposition knew that if they killed each other off they'd be easy pickings for me.