how did the singular hand disruption card and 2 stifles work against combo decks for you, it seems like they would roll you over,
All in all though it looks like an interesting deck to play, albight be kinda strange, how does it play, like gifts or it kinda seems like it plays out like Cerebreal Assassin, control the game using strange cards like intuition until you combo out all of a sudden and then just win.
singular hand disruption card, 2 stifles, and 8 counters you mean? The combo matchup is fine, it's not dominant but that's unrealistic. You're not really going to get a deck that breaks like 60% against a good pilot because Long gets unbeatable hands, wins the die roll, etc. The testing I did made me feel the deck was in the 55%/60% range, which was what I felt was the right area to shoot for. If they don't get the win before you get Intuition, it's difficult for them to make many profitable plays besides Will. I do bring in another Stifle and 3 Duress in the match, and I guess there's nothing wrong with pre-boarding in the right field. My tournament matches against Long-style decks all went very smoothly, and my testing made me comfortable with the match, but we're obviously talking small sample size here, so it's possible it's a dog in the matchup. I'd be very loathe to cut anything that handles shops however, as in tournament play that was the biggest stealer of match wins.
As for the how it plays question, it depends. If the game state is nonthreatening, you can go off like gifts, though with one less card from intuition, it requires a little more available resources than gifts did. You can always get like Recoup Tinker Walk, but games are rarely slow enough that that play's right. With a Lotus or Will or Walk or Recoup in your hand though (or say, 2x Intuition), you can get away with a lot more. When it's not possible to win, generally because something threatening is on board, or maybe because you think they for some reason have counters but didnt' use them on the Intuition, you can usually dig out of it. Unfortunately, though the goofy answers can dig you out of tons of bad game states that other games would lose, the deck can have some trouble turning that into a win. Sometimes (in critical tournament situations) huge advantage can be generated between Raven's Crime, Strip Mine, and Grudge, only to lose to topdecked (or worse, Mystical'd for) Will.
Seems like the deck is begging for some card-draw...like DA or AK...both of them are however pretty dependant of the yard, so i'm not sure if that's the right engine Smile
25 Sources dosn't seem like all that much to me, i usually run 24-25 in a drain deck anyway.
The list evolved from an intuition list that ran DAs, but I was underwhelmed by them compared to just getting loam/crime/strip in the same situations, DA is a card I'd love to have an excuse to run, but it was usually too slow to be relevant. AK I'm pretty sure is just bad. If I could find a more efficient/relevant threat assembly I'd love it, but I think DA and AK are just too much wheel spinning.
It's totally possible that the lands were right, and I just got very unlucky on the day (and would make me feel better, too), but at some point after losing enough matches you have to look somewhere besides luck, and given my huge amount of mulligans, I'm pretty dubious about the lands.
I'm confused... Where on earth are the Crime/Punishments?? Wink
I couldn't decide between:
Crime and Punishment
The Perfect Crime
Crimes Against Humanity, or
Crimes of Passion.
I went with Russian Classical Literature, because seriously, you gotta love those guys. The fact that it's another card name sucks, I know
, I was hoping to get a foil Russian Raven's Crime to seal the deal, but no luck before the event
