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Playing the Unplayable: Mishra’s Afterbirth in a Classic DE
Posted on February 19, 2014 by PlanetWalls
PlanetWalls A.J. Goldman (PlanetWalls online) is MTGO Academy's content manager, a Philosophy of Religion grad student, and a semi-competitive Johnny Magic player (emphasis on the 'semi') whose full biography you can read here.
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Why at 11:20 would you not sac drillers, vault, pod and make a 6/4?
In match 1
You mention it, my bad. It was killing me atm.
“…discarded afterbirth”
eeeeewww! gross!
remember that you can name Polluted Delta with Phyrexian Revoker, and it can”t fetch anything.
You also need another 5 drop. Maybe Deranged Hermit? Pod into a bunch of blockers, next turn stack echo and pod away ther Hermit. Or maybe Precursor Golem.
This is almost certainly way too tricksie, but if you need to get creatures out of your hand and back into your library, there is always Leashling.
PRJ: Revoker only hits nonlands, but stops mana abilities. Needle is the other way around, so you can Revoke a Lotus Petal, but not a fetch and vice versa with Needle (since the fetch activation is not technically a mana ability).
also @PRJ, Pod can only be used as a sorcery, so you can’t avoid paying the echo cost on Deranged Hermit (during upkeep) by using Pod (only during main). And you usually won’t be able to pay the echo cost, so Deranged Hermit would usually just kill your Pod chain (or I guess reset it back down to cost zero with the tokens).
But Precursor Golem seems like a great idea, since
1) it’s an artifact, which means you can easily naturally cast it from hand (including being able to use workshop mana)
2) 9 power is a pretty good clock
3) it leaves behind two very relevant 3/3 bodies, e.g. they eat most 2 drop hate bears, trade with Lodestone, are sac fodder for Salvage Golem
Precursor was in my original list from last year. Here: http://www.mtgoacademy.com/planetwalls-classic-league-2012-13-qt-1-matches/
It’s a good card to play, and I think it deserves a place in the 75. One problem is that Salvage Titan and Lodestone Golem are golems, so if they Ancient Grudge or Swords your main Precursor, it can be a 1-sided Wrath in your opponent’s favor.
Still, some decks just can’t answer it.
I think in match 1 game 1 you just made a bunch of random stuff happen without actually changing the clock any (as opposed to if you had just left Lodestone on the table). I could be wrong since the Frost Titan did tap the Nev Disk. I’d have to rewatch it to be sure.
Against Affinity, playing that Plague Spitter game 2 seemed the 100% obvious choice to me. It would have slowed him down and made him do all the sacrificing to Ravager / Skullclamping at less than optimal times. Although as it played out, you wouldn’t have drawn enough land to get out of it, you didn’t know that at the time.
This deck does have a lot of difficult, not-obvious decisions and cards you don’t want to draw.
“Might as well attack before combat.”
@GB: “Might as well attack before combat.” Yes… might as well.
As for the Titan play, I think it’s right because Titan is harder to eliminate in combat and harder to bounce/kill (because of his ‘frost shield’ ability) than Lodestone. But you could be right.
I could be wrong about the Plague Spitter play, but I think Phyrexian Tower only adds colorless unless you’re sac-ing something. I could be very wrong about what I was doing/thinking, though, and I’m positive I play-mistaked (-mistook?) the hell out of that match.