A Common Combination

Pauper CalmingRespirator

SCORE: 8 | 13 COMMENTS | 4000 VIEWS | IN 4 FOLDERS

2-2 Daily event —April 10, 2015

So I finally got to test this deck out in a Magic online daily today, and I thought I'd give a brief breakdown of how it went here:

Round 1 vs Hexproof
This matchup seems alright, I keep a 1 land hand with a lot of cantrips and a probe, see they're also on 1 land and 2 cantrips, but a lot of gas otherwise. We miss on lands for 2 turns, and by the time we start hitting our land drops we're a turn or 2 behind their development. We lose 1 turn off the combo, but put up a good fight.
For sideboarding I bring in the two Annul for the two Dispel and think about replacing the Gigadrowse with something, but I saw some non-hexproof threats game one and decide to leave it in.
In Game two we keep a pretty great hand and put ourselves in a pretty good position by using Retraction Helix to pump our Elusive Spellfist and bounce the Rancor on the opponents Gladecover Scout which had been pumped by Quasali pridemage so we could eat it. Then have the ability to race the pridemage with the combo. We probably would have gotten there anyway, but our opponent disconnected after hitting 5 Forests and an Ancient Den off his first Kurphix's Insight.

1-0

Round Two vs Affinity
The opponent has a very scary draw game 1, but we manage to combo off at 1 life. This wouldn't have happened if the opponent had sacrificed another land to one of his atogs to kill the blocking Mirran Spy, but thankfully he didn't, instead leaving open a red for Galvanic Blast, for which we were able to find a Dispel.
For Sideboarding I bring in the 2 Annul to mess with them and 2 Dispel for Fling and Galvanic Blast in place of 2 Gigadrowse, a Brainstorm and a Herbal Poultice.
Game two I miss lethal, which my brother points out just after I move past my main phase. The thing is, I can combo off with a summoning sick Mirran Spy, since I don't have to use Retraction Helix. I had the helix, spellfist and petal, along with a just played spy and an open mana. I go for it next turn, but they have Galvanic Blast, which they may have found off the Thoughtcast they used in the turn we gave them.
In sideboarding I decide Mizzium Skin might be better than Dispel because of the toughness boost and swap them out, this turns out to be a bad decision. Game 3 we lose really badly to a really good draw of 3 Auriok Sunchaser and 3 Pyroblasts, which, if you haven't noticed, counter blue spells. This is not something the Mizzium Skin in my hand could help with.
The original idea behind the Mizzium Skin was to counter overloaded Electrickery or save guys from 3 damage spell, but Dispel does both those things.

1-1

Round 3 vs Affinity
This guy knew what we were doing as soon as we started doing it and tried to kill guys asap. Thankfully we drew the pieces of the combo quickly and killed him both games. I think we're faster than most of affinities draws, especially if we have more Dispels for interaction. I sideboarded the same way as last rounds first game. Against him we got a turn 4 game 1, then a super slow kill after running him out of resources and waiting for the final piece.

2-1

Round 4 vs Izzet Fiend
Honestly this matchup feels horrible, they're faster than us with Temur Battle Rage, they have removal spells in Lightning Bolt and Flame Slash and the opponent knew that the creatures were kill on sight material. Post board he also had Pyroblast. It did not go well and we lost 0-2. Thinking about it though, all the cards we're actually worried about are red. As such I want to get my hands on a couple more Hydroblast, as they seem really good here. Also all the removal is damage based, so i want to try the Gurmag Angler package in the board.

Based on these results, these are the changes I've made:

Maindeck:
-2 Gigadrowse
-1 Retraction Helix
-1 Zephyr Scribe
-2 Herbal Poultice
+2 Bone Saw
+1 Mirran Spy
+1 Gitaxian Probe
+1 Dispel
+1 Brainstorm

Sideboard:
-2 Gigadrowse
-3 Mizzium Skin
-1 Dispel
-1 Gitaxian Probe
+1 Annul
+1 Hydroblast
+1 Zephyr Scribe
+1 Swamp
+3 Gurmag Angler