Ok! I’m tooled up with my broken Baral deck, the tournament is green, lets do this!
Game 1.1: Opponent cast 0 spells.
Game 1.2: Murasa Ranger, 2x Cultivator, Swell of Growth, Haunted Cloak. Not bad! He dealt me some damage with those, and then died as soon as Baral hit the table.
Game 1.3: Opponent cast 0 spells.
Not challenging. Already bored of tapping on the screen.
Game 2.1: Opponent dead before Enraged activated. Cast 0 spells.
Game 2.2: Opponent dead before Enraged activated. Scatter to the winds, 2xNatural Connection, Ghostly Wings. Presumably a Baral deck.
Game 2.3: Opponent dead before Enraged activated. Cinder Glade, Fertile Thicket.
Bored of playing the same deck now. Maybe I should change it to something that might lose. Why am I playing against Garruk decks? They’re not going to win, are they??? Matchmaking really is poor, has anyone ever mentioned that before? Why can’t I play things that are appropriately challenging for me more often?
Game 3.1: Opponent dead before Supercharged activated. 2xFabrication Module, 2xSlayers Plate.
Game 3.2: Opponent gets supercharged! Narnam Cobra, Broodhunter Wurm, Bonded Construct, Leaf Gilder, and Dwynen all come into play. This looks suspiciously like the kind of deck someone would play if they were cheating. That kind of thing makes me rabid, like a penguin.
Game 3.3: Opponent gets supercharged! Longtusk Cub, Dwynen. No Damage dealt to me.
Well, some games went beyond turn 5 there, but nothing really troubled the scorer. I remembered to check my phone battery. 100% when I started… 20% now. Ouch. Onwards and upwards to the tricky node!
Game 4.1: ThingITI, Fevered Visions, 2xPrism Array. Prism Array got my Baral during my turn on turn 3, so I had to wait til turn 4 for the kill.
Game 4.2: Aethertide Whale, Claustrophobia. Claustrophobia, you say? Coo, that’s a relevant card! That slows me down for a turn or two until I can pop it. Then comes a big turn: Aethertide Whale, Rashmi, Animist’s Awakening, Days Undoing. It’s brown trousers time for a second there, I can tell you. However, Day’s Undoing stops his combo, whereas my hand fills up with spells and Baral fills them up with mana. He’s dead next turn.
Game 4.3: Prism Array. Not a problem. Waiting for my Baral. Supercharged brings this turn: Another Prism Array, Oath of Ajanix2, Pig (or ‘Decimator of the Provinces’, if you insist on using it’s real name), Zendikar Resurgent. That’s pretty scary. I hit Kiora’s second ability, and it fetches: Niblis of Frost. Curses! I Moon the Pig and pass the turn. Another Pig comes down. I play Niblis and disable the pumped up Moon token, and the Pig hits me. And again. I start to worry! I give the Pig vigilance and flying and pump my Niblis up big enough to kill it, but disaster strikes: Natural Connection triggers Prism Array, which takes out my Niblis for the turn. Damn, that much pump cost me a bunch of spells. I hit Kiora’s second ability again, and it’s… a Niblis again! NOOOOO!!! I finally draw into a Seek the Wild, but it’s way too late for that, Pig takes me down 
That epic loss cost me all of 10 crystals to my prize pool.
End credits roll.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yQSnI98JlZU
Prizes:
- -60 crystals
- A 5 card booster. I didn’t watch it open because I didn’t want to have an epileptic fit from that new flash effect, but nothing went ding.
- 15 Unobtanium. That’s 3.75% of the cost of a single card, which, let’s face it, has got a much higher chance of being an Aetherwind Basker or Yahenni than a Black Vise or Lightning Runner.
Was it worth it?
Unquestionably not.
What about those 2 fun games you played?
Well, hang on, 4.2 was hardly fun. I played cleverly to try and pop the Claustrophobia, but in the end he killed it himself with a match4 that I didn’t even set up for him. Aside from that, tho, we were both just playing our infinite kill combos… no interaction there.
4.3, on the other hand, presented me with some tough choices, and while I think y’all will agree with me that I got a bit unlucky, I might well have misplayed that game. It’s certainly worth questioning the decision to play with Niblis of Frost instead of Metallurgic Summonings; I’d have won that game if I’d had Baral is the only creature in my deck. MSummons also regenerates creatures if they are killed, and the increase in power of the thopters is permanent. I think I’d still play with the Niblis next time, tho, since Disable is not irrelevant, and in a green node, you have to respect that fact that Gaea’s Revenge may turn up at some point. Secondly, was Mooning the Pig a mistake? I’d seen 40% of his deck, so I should have known that there was a reasonable chance that the next threat to enter play would be another Pig. I should have locked Pig1 down with the Niblis+1 spell a turn.
So, all in all, I made a net loss in prizes, and the 1 game where I had to make some relevant decisions and I might have learned something was not worth the 11 games of tedious looping I had to go through.
Is Baral still totally over-powered?
Oh hell yes.
Changed title of thread.
