Postby LP, of the Fires » Sun May 25, 2014 5:31 am
Got some testing in vs. actual good decks.
Affinity: I thought this matchup would be even to slightly unfavorable, but I actually shat all over the robots. Mogg Fanatic is basically lighning bolt against there deck since it kills all there creatures and lava mana gets to do it multiple times. Once you have damage dealers on board, EotGR can take over the game. All the 2 for 1s. And post board, you even get dedicated hate!
UWR(geist version): Shrine is obviously a big pain for them as they can't remove it once it's in play. Eidolon is usually worth at least 2 points, sometimes more and is the big reason why this matchup is winnable. Your mana denial is also good here as it not only gives you a nice tempo boost(keeping them off of cryptic/resto), it doubles as a clean answer to Colonnade which is there main closer.
Game 1 can be particularly tough if you flood out on seering bloods though and they don't present you
with targets. If they do though, it's very winnable. I lost a close game where I drew all four bloods and got blown out when on the last turn, I went double blood on his resto and he countered the second.
Helix is annoying, but not the end of the world. We have cards in our deck that give us some small amount of lategame staying power in Figure, Eidolon, and shrine. That and just hoarding bolts can be enough to get there sometimes. Post board you have blood moon and if that sticks, you just win the game. Beware though that moon is NOT good against the kiki version as they play plenty of basics and need just one plains to get resto in play at which point you have to leave mana up the whole game to not die to jiki.
As for the board of neals deck, the spellbombs make a lot of sense when you start playing the deck as there are matchups where a bunch of the cards in your deck are unplayable(VD, Seering whatever) and spellbomb does double duty of being a burn spells and being able to cycle when you need
it to. It's one of those cards you should never maindeck but you board it in all the time.
Still think dragon claw is terrible, still haven't tested it to verify my brilliance.
You gotta understand, I love the beatdown. I really do. I always have.
Beatdown is hard, though.
Patrick chapin