One of the most important things to know when you play a lot of different decks is the difference between when there’s room to continue to learn a deck and when it’s time to stop and set a deck aside for a new deck.
When you just want to play something new this is pretty easy. The urge to play the new deck is overwhelming and it’s obvious it’s time for a change. On the other hand if you aren’t particularly excited about a different deck then changing can be a really traumatic process.
After Deathrite Shaman got banned I expected that my 4 Color Gifts deck would be super strong thanks to the lack of graveyard hate present in the meta. Turns out Deathrite Shaman was a very important piece of the deck. Between mana fixing/acceleration and the threat he represented, not to mention the life gain he was pretty important in the deck (oh and his ability to fizzle Snapcaster Mage). I was a little upset, but that’s not really the point. You can gripe about bannings all day and night but that won’t stop them from happening. It’s best to work within the parameters that WOTC dictates and move from there.
So I went back to Storm. Sadly, after Storm’s dominance on camera at the Pro Tour along with some newly printed hate (Eidolon of Rhetoric) the deck is really not holding its own in the local meta and I suspect it’s got some bugs in the larger ones as well. Combine that with the fact that I can’t NOT DRAW A F&$KING LAND to save my life, and it’s time to move on.
I’ve had some success with UR Delver/ UWR Tempo and UWR Control. But without the Cryptic Commands/ Remands I need for these decks I’m really neutered. I have Goyfs so I can build B/G Midrange. But that’s not exactly my style. It looks like I might have to just dig in and play something janky until I can get those blue spells back. That’s rough, frankly, because going 0-3 in my last two modern Events is hard enough with a top level deck, but doing that with something rogue really upsets me. Maybe I’ll sleeve up Burn again. Cross my fingers and try to do 20 to my opponents.
I just really feel like the kid on Christmas that got the half used Quacker Oats cylinder of Sticka Bricks and Linkin Logs (that actually happened to me one Christmas). I don’t have enough of either thing to make the thing I want to. It’s a bit depressing, being the store’s punching bag. That is Magic though. You don’t really understand struggle until you’ve cast Dissipate instead of Cryptic Command in Modern.
Zac Clark, Durdle Magus