All decks fail when they run into me on ladder.

Up next is WWs The Old Brutal in this fifth round of playtesting... wins against radkos and I only had two mana!!DJ, this build I think could be better than yours maybe? 5-0

Next up is Havens Ferrari...lost to Gruul ramp which went wide. I got him to 4 tho. 4-1! Eliminated!

dj's build was very solid but is now ruined by 2x glorybringer. 2x useless 5 drops

I've been thinking about that a lot tbh. I think it was better before with either P&K or the 4-drop vampire in that slot. It's the change I would make right now based on this contest's feedback. I just really want to include some new cards, lol. I think there's an even better build than mine, that I can make right now.

Idk Glorybringer did work for me in the build... maybe the build would prefer something different, but Glorybringer isn't bad.

Chaining haste creatures T3-5 is demoralizing AF

Woodlandwanderer must really be scared of glorybringers to be trashing them so hard.

People have played worse 5 drops without anybody getting so caught up and going out of their way to justify how bad they think they are.

Perhaps Glorybringer is just the card that totally wrecks woodlandwanderer's showdown deck?

DJ, playing stuff on curve is key for your deck. I would replace Glorybringer with:
1x The Nalaars
1x Bloodhall Priest

At T5 I often would rather be playing two spells anyway

Same as it ever was... heh. Glorybringer is in there just so we can try it for the new season. (@Haven. It's 5 mana = big problem, imo)

I was also thinking, cut//ribbons and red god, taking harnessed lightning's spot.

Cut Ribbons for sure, but I don't think Red God is good in this deck. We aren't voiding our bowels hand fast enough.

Maybe insult then. We're really just touring around with about 5 slots in the entire deck.

Insult could certainly work, I'd be all over that. It's an excellent discard target for Copter too, and obviously a win condition a turn earlier if the stars align. Can you imagine a T5 of playing Insult and then something else? Would be nice.

Did you see my comment about The Old Brutal by WW? I'm debating if its a better build. I'll keep playtesting it.

Awww I don't like y'all smart people T-T but my censor grasp even cut ribbons can easily trade with the 5 mana Lambholt pacifist.

Bloodhall Priest sounds terrible for DJs list. Next to no discard sources for 3 mana casts and not reliably hellbent for 2d trigger. 4 mana for a straight 4/4 that maybe gets a 2d trigger once every 20 games doesn't sound good here.

Three 5 drops is prob too many, but personally I'd still consider 1x Dragon. 4 hastey flying damage with an option to burn out a blocker and help another creature get through on attacks is good stuff. Cutting the other for P&K sounds fine. Cutting both for Insult // Injury might be fine too, if it doesn't crowd the 3 drop spot too much in practice.

Getting the other Cut // Ribbons in sounds good. Harnessed Lightning has synergies w/ Siphoner/Hubs and is instant speed tho so idk which is best choice.

Honestly, Bloodhall is the only card we've been talking about that has both been in the real list, and performed well. I would also consider P&K, obviously, and not yet tested, but also reasonable, the 6-1 haste trample. The dragon is seemingly underperforming, so I'm thinking I should cut it. There's only room for one insult, and I think that's the right amount for this deck - it's pretty situational, although great. The harnessed lightning synergies exist, but they aren't that big of a deal, it's usually being used to kill a 3 toughness creature in my experience, so the net energy is generally 0, and it may as well be cut which hits a few more things and doubles as a possible win condition.

This is all speculation of course. And the deck is ridiculously consistent as is. BB has it at around 90%, I'm even higher. Like I said, we're just talking a couple slots - all of which have very good options.

i don't mind cutting Glory for land either.
I'm really going to study WW's deck closely, because it's very similar to yours and if it ends up performing better (my sample size is WAY too small right now), then I want to really understand what is working. For instance, I think Bomat is better than Walking Battista. I think WW made some card choices that may be better and i like how much land he is playing.

I'll be sure to post more about it as I play more. I really love this contest, I can't explain how happy Barney is testing this stuff. I'm down to five decks now in this contest!

WW's deck not getting any votes and DJ's vote getting 3 is sort of weird cuz you'd think they'd both get votes. I agree with that last deck getting votes, it's really good. Gem voting for his own deck too, maybe?

My sample size is way too low, but I liked the 4 games with DJs list better than the 3 with WWs. WWs loss was to a proven deck archetype that had a great draw so I'm trying to not let that affect my opinion too much - but I really do think Harvesters belong in Rakdos vehicles lists. Also Dragon hasn't underperformed in my matches, and as mentioned already I think running 1 copy (filling a Skyship-esk #2 roll) is good. Maybe opinion will change after playing more games but currently Dragon has treated me well.

I'm inclined to agree with Barney about Courier over Ballista. For this list anyways, Courier T1 gets the party started right, and pilots Copters/Harvesters when blockers show up - and offers potential card draw that the deck otherwise is short on.

I think Bomat is not a very good fit in my deck, tbh. I want nothing but 3 power or at least evasive creatures, it doesn't fit. Bomat can be ignored. Ballista can not.

Yeah Bomat is mostly good with Key to the City and madness stuff


Ok back to round five of testing

Modulos Raggros....wins against Orzhov Zombies. 5-0. Really decisive too. Fiery tempers were huge

Up next my favourite, hellbent madness by Cucho...amazing, played against Jeskai Control . He killed all my creatures several times and had me too decking against 20 life and I still won thanks to Karl Zev with Bloodlust. 5-0

Final deck this round is Madness of radkos... real nail biter against Boros weenie exert but I pulled it off with one life left. 5-0!!

Ok at the end of round five, we have 5 decks that are all 5-0! Very cool.

I don't think I have time for round six tonight so another time.

Day 4: Cucho Lambreta, InfamousGemini

No gameplay video (sorry Cucho!). I set up twitch to record and it was for sure running when I started searching for my first game, but it crashed and I didn't realize that until after my first game with Gems deck.


Cucho Lambreta: 3-0

G1 vs Orzombies. Land screwed, 2 Mountains in opening hand, never drew another. Ended up Copter pitching 3 or 4 black spells because I couldn't draw a black source, and I really thought that was going to be the death of me. Opp had dropped Cryptbreaker T1 and Binding Mummy T2 so I thought I'd be in trouble. But it didn't matter in the end. Binding Mummy doesn't do **** vs balls out aggro that doesn't want to be playing defense anyways. Opp conceded after I dropped bloodlust on an Adept which presented lethal with the team unless they blocked and lost their army of creatures (leaving me with Copter and a pilot to finish the job later).

G2 vs rank 40 Selesnya Ramp/midrange(?). These games tend to be over so quickly it's difficult to figure out what type of deck I'm facing sometimes. I was on the play, had a ridiculously explosive start, and kept the pressure dialed up to 11. Opp played a pair of mana dorks and a pair of Visionarys but that's all I remember seeing. Then I cast Insult with more attackers than they had blockers and they conceded.

G3 vs Rakdos Aggro. Mulled to 5, on the draw. Didn't look good early on but I managed to pull it off in the end by a hair. Opp stuck a T2 Exert dood (red 2/1 who exerts into a 3/3 trampler) and then T3 stuck the madness aura that buffs 2/2, and just kept playing removal to kill whatever I cast and kept attacking. Fortunately I had played a Copter T2 and was able to crew it before my creatures would die to keep myself in the race. In the end I was able to stick a Scrounger and madness out a Priest, then next turn recur a 2nd Scrounger and cast Bloodlust on it to win the race.


InfamousGemini: 1-0

G1 vs rank 40 Golgari Midrange. This was a tough match and it went right down to the wire. I flooded out a bit making things more difficult than they could have been. Opp pushed one of my doods early, played a Bone Picker to apply pressure. Later Recsaged a Courier rather than the single key I had in play (which I thought was a mistake because I had an empty hand, and Mountain up to sac Courier in response for the 3 cards under it... which were all lands because the flood was real). In the end, a pair of keys making my doods unblockable while pumping a pair of Adepts was too much for opp to deal with. Opp also made what I thought was a mistake on their second to last turn by only swinging with a single creature instead of the team, which would have taken me down to lethal range of their next turn. Not sure what they were thinking - I had 2 mountains open and a pair of cards in hand, but I'm not sure what they thought I had that made them not swing with all... saving them as blockers was pointless with the keys I had out (maybe they thought I'd be stupid and attack the baby Nissa they had out, instead of their life total, giving them more time?). By not putting me in lethal range then, I was able to beat them in the race.

At this point I realized the obnoxious new twitch bar location wasn't blocking view of my hand so I peaked at the app and discovered it had crashed, recording none of my matches. Ah well, I'm tired AF so it's a good excuse to call this session over and finish up round 1 testing later.

I didn't play Bone Picker.