This Time It Will Work

Does this sound familiar?

This time it will work. I've got a system. It can't fail. It will work.

Listen to a gambler long enough and you'll hear something like this. You'll also hear something like this if you listen to someone building a Commander deck.

I've got a serious case of "it will work"-itis. The games at the friendly local gaming store where I play are speeding up, big time. In addition to combo, where I lost to a turn 5 Azami last weekend, the fairer decks are also speeding up. In a quick follow-up game, a guy cast Prime Speaker Zegana to draw 21 cards on turn 5. It was a lucky Dark Depths with Thespian's Stage that set things in motion, but it happened. A few new Xenagos decks at the shop are insanely fast.



The Dark Eldrazi deck is capable of explosive starts. A hasted / shrouded Pathrazer of Ulamog on turn 5? Sure, that can happen. You know what else can happen by turn 5? A whole lotta nuthin. Since I only get a play a couple of games a week, sitting on a weak opening for 5 turns is like torture - and not the good kind either.

So, I go back home and tinker with the deck during the week. I test the draws. Practice mulligans. Looks for lines of play. All that. But with 99 cards in the deck, sitting at 4 lands with a handful of 6+ casting cost cards is a painful reality. This is where the craziness sets in.

Maybe if I just swap out this card and this card, it will work. It has to work. I can make this work.

It's not that the deck doesn't work. It does just fine. But, with the game speeding up, not throwing threats out onto the board (or at least something!) by turn 5 or 6 means that I'm not really in the game. I'm not holding up my end of the deal. It's not fun for me and it's not fun for my opponent(s) either.

We all know the feeling of needing to rip a land off the top to get things started. You wait, wait, wait for your turn to come around, watching all of the awesome things happening around you, only to draw... not a land. "I'll be discarding for my turn. Go."

What I'm trying to do is to minimize the possibility of getting stuck in a deck that is trying to cast some of the highest casting cost creatures in the game: the Eldrazi legends. It's a tough row to hoe. I keep replacing cards to focus more on ramping, making land drops, and drawing cards. The deck is about the creatures. All of the other stuff is a means to that end. Most of the traditional black control elements are gone at this point.

I'll give it one more week. It'll work this time. I'm sure of it.