We did it! We managed to brew up a unique deck and take it to a tourney... and out of many participants, some tough, some not tough, we came out in... Wait for it... 12th place! Not too bad!
Here are my initial reflections on it:
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Pride of the Clouds doesn't make the cut... It was a great threat but this is modern, and regardless of how fat a creature is this still either die to some dumb removal spell (I'm looking at you, Fatal Push) or you don't have enough fliers left to make it worth the two mana. Sadly, as he didn't play well with any of the synergies of the deck other than flying (no hexproof, no lording from the captains, no uncounterable from caverns) he has been cut...
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Anthems are key. Getting my critters out of bolt range (or in the case of the match up I am most angry at; skred range) is huge. Upping wanderer's ability to counter things is huge. Doing lots of flying damage is huge. In short... I need more. So, I need to apologize to frostdiggity: You were right... Phantasmal Image is great. I am giving it a try in two of the Pride of the Clouds' spot.
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Variability is really important... Being able to have cards with multiple purposes allows for flexibility against various meta and un-meta decks. Because of that I am going to be turning a hard eye towards my sideboard... I don't think I like the Mana Leaks there. I never used them... But then again, I should have against skred (that f-ing match...) I am also trying out one Cryptic Command in the third Pride of the Clouds spot.
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Sideboarding is super key to competitive modern... And I made some bad calls on that due to inexperience. So now that I have more under my belt I think I can do better in the future.
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All creatures are not the right creatures... What I mean by that is, I kept some hands that had the right numbers: 3 land, 3 creatures, 1 sort of response or draw... but all three of those creatures were, say, 2 Selfless Spirits and 1 Pride of the Clouds... Those are great cards when paired in tandem with other cool things, but against a deck like merfolk it just ended up with me being sad as I did a bunch of unfavorable trades.
I might later break down my matches at the tournament, but for now I am going to rest and process the events. To say the least, I did very well against creature heavy decks like burn and goblins. I did more poorly to skred-red and merfolk... Both of which I did really close (1/2s on both games).
That's all for tonight. I'd like to thank the people that gave me feedback and support with this deck getting it ready over the past few weeks. Namely: bobtoll and frostdiggity. You guys helped shape the deck!
