MTGA

So it feels like I win more games with the preconstructed decks the game provides you with than with my own hand built deck, but I am pretty sure that is an illusion. I tend to play much faster games with the preconstructed decks because most of them are aggro decks, so win or lose the game goes fast. I can knock out three games with one of those decks in the time it takes me to play one game with my deck with a decent starting hand. (my deck sort of sits there barely not losing until I can wear my opponent out and empty their hand, then come back through and swing hard at the end. Though I can get hands that play like slow aggro decks on occasion, like in round 4 or 5 I launch a damage ramp where a good aggro deck launches in round 1 or 2)

Oh man I saw (and lost to) a pure gate instead of land deck today. A bunch of my favorite toys do nasty things to my opponent but give them lands in play as a result. That deck got no benefit from my obnoxious counters that help my opponents' mana ramp (and my cheapest removal card was able to target their mana source where it usually can't because it allows them to search their deck for a basic land, and this deck had none. if I had a slightly different hand, I could have done wonderfully awful things to that particular deck. It uses a bunch of low cost big creatures that are balanced by the fact that they require gates instead of lands, and most decks aren't primarily made up of gates.

My next opponent, who I did beat was playing a classic control deck, with a huge array of big monsters and lanowar elves (and some cards to make the elves swing above weight class...) This player was running a lot of the same cards I do, on the green side, a bunch of mid cost bruisers. I was able to hold them away from my last life point for long enough to do a couple of board wipes while they were down to a card per round and then ended up returning my hp total to its proper range, around 20 with a couple of big plays. (a 5/5 life link angel and the Pelakka Wurm, which my deck now runs two of because 7/7 trample, gain
e life on entering the battle field and draw a card on leaving is among the best powers generically for me. Especially when I am playing against people who use the white enchantments that exile a card until the enchantment goes away... (I play those enchantments too, but I generally also have a solid answer for them...)so not only does my big scary creature come back, it does so in a way that gets me 7 more hp...

Heh, that game also had the long confused hover over my graveyard to figure out what the hell the spell i just cast was when I used a pure blue counterspell in my green white deck to wipe out a thing they tied up an obscene amount of resources summoning one turn that was supposed to stomp me. (i missed the name but it ended up being a 16/16...) MTGA lets you look at your opponents' public information stuff like what is in their graveyard, but it highlights the cards you are looking at in their view. There is a particular long read that detonates "how the hell did that person do that with a deck that shouldn't do that"

On the other hand I did have a great experience of aggro slaying one of the most obnoxious mill decks in the current meta.
There is a blue creature that lets you break the deck building rules about how many copies of a card can be in the deck, but unlike the rats that do that, instead of just getting huge as you add more, this one lest you tap clusters of four of them to mill 12 cards. My main deck has a few answers to them, but no sure things. But i was trying to do the daily quest which was cast 20 spells of colors that are very minority colors in my deck, so I was using a preconstructed deck, and I got to just rush their deck to death. Those style combo decks often have a few counters for common ways of interrupting their combo, which means with some bad luck they can totally hold you off long enough to mill your deck, but turns out the counter to my "hit them in the face over and over again" approach was to sacrifice the creatures that were the main aspect of their combo. There is something super satisfying to shutting down a combo deck. It is second in my fun rating to winning a game by doing clever play through things like baiting your opponent into overcomitting and then cutting off their resources. Well, second to that, and a provisional first when the combo deck is one of the ones that is mechanically slow but mostly uninterruptible in how it very slowly grinds out a victory if you don't have the exact right card in hand at the right moment. Beating those decks is even better. Especially when you do it with a land mine in your library... *totally no hate on for the automatic repeated mill decks not at all*

(no subject)

There is a pretty nice creature wipe spell Kaya's Wrath. that is WWBB to cast, destroys all of the creatures on the board and gives you a life points for each of your own creatures you destroy. My same card for the same situation is Cleansing Nova 3WW, destroy all creatures or destroy all artifacts and enchantments with no boon for the caster. I like that spell, but it is in probably a third of my games harder to cast than Cleansing nova.
But the reason I am considering it is the game i just played against one of the irritating BW vampire decks that focus on mechanics that gain life for the player and do things like buff creatures or do damage to your opponent when you gain life. They were playing kaya's wrath. And i suspect, given the number they played, they had replaced cleansing nova with it, which is not a terrible choice for a deck that relies that heavily on enchantments.

My deck is pretty reliant on artifacts and enchantments, but I like having that disenchantment option available, especially for a deck that focuses on clearing my enchantments and artifacts from the field.

My opponent had me down to 1 life and they had 36 or so life, and a medium bruiser who did damage whenever they gained life. And a healer's hawk. a 1/1 flying life link creature. I had an empty field, but a couple of nice artifacts and a pair of ixilan's bindings holding some of their common creature types off the board.
I had managed to pop out a Lyra Dawn's Herald, a real nasty piece of work, a 6ww 4/8 flying trample double strike indestructable vigilant dinosaur right before they played the hawk. That kept the 4/4 kill me with life gain creature from attacking, but if the hawk attacked, even if I blocked it with the dinosaur, I died.
I had a plan, to drag things out a bit, except my next draw was a favorite sorcery of mine, 1rw and select 1 or both deal 3 damage to all creatures and give all of your creatures life link. Given that the dinosaur was indestructable and can't die of damage, I picked both, and killed the hawk, then attacked with double strike to gain 10 hp (another thing gave it +1/+1)
3 rounds later i had 20+ life and they were down to less than 15. And they cast their big ass saving spell, Kaya's Wrath. it did nothing to my creature who can't be destroyed or killed, only exiled or a few dozen other things. Then I dropped a very unfair Carnage tyrant (7/6 trample hexproof) and suddenly after their big swing failed, they were sufficiently demoralized to quit.