This week night I was to play three games with the new Bounce Lands deck I’ve been brainstorming on this blog.

I feared I had made an unstoppable monster, when instead I lost all three games.

Let’s go back to the drawing board!

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Breakdown

The first game, I was one turn away from comboing out with Retreat to Coralhelm, then had a miniature stroke and wheeled it away because I was so distracted by mana-math. Discouraging, but that’s on me. Other than that, the combo of Armageddon + Heroic Intervention worked splendidly.

As for the second and third games, I was able to stall enough with bounce to resolve Progenitus, only to lose the next turn. I guess if you just bounce away your problems, they eventually come back to bite you!

We need to add some more interaction. So how can we make room?

Cutting the Group Hug

If my whole gameplan is to reset the board + rebuild faster, why am I sharing the tools? I have enough of these effects duplicated elsewhere, I can afford to cut the ones that actively undermine my advantage.

Cutting the non-Bounce Ramp

The bounce lands + draw is generally good enough, and I felt bad devoting turns (and tempo) to these spells. So far, with 10 fetches and the aforementioned draw, I haven’t really needed the fixing.

I am adding in Hour of Promise because it guarantees me two bounce lands, which can then bounce other lands back to my hand to take full advantage of the deck’s signature Exploration effects.

Upgrading the Courser

The life gain was nice but negligible, so Swapping Courser for Future Sight feels like a strict upgrade (yes, UUU is a non-trivial cost but I’m optimistic).

Swaps and Graveyard Tricks

After straight up losing a game thanks to my own Concordant Crossroads (mass bounce is less good when the opponents have perma-haste), I decided to swap in a Haste enabler that’s one-sided.

Considering half of my wheels discard my hand, it’s not impossible to get him into the graveyard. Still, it gave me an excuse to run these two spicy tutors:

Final Parting is nice because it can setup a wheel for later via Commit / Memory. And while I was adding cute graveyard tech, I decided to swap out the least impressive mass bounce spell, Devastation Tide, for the generally more versatile Kederekt Leviathan.

Lastly, since I was adding two tutors, I decided to cut Knowledge Exploitation. I’m less likely to find the big effects I want (wheels, Armageddon) in an opponent’s deck.

Adding More Answers

As noted above, the main lesson learned was that mass bounce, though versatile, wasn’t a true answer. Cutting the ramp spells opened up a lot of space, so I tried to focus on spells that would sweep the board but leave a resolved Progentius unscathed.

Like Displacement Wave (which is in the deck already), Penicious Deed and Gaze of Granite can answer most of the board while conveniently missing my 10-cost Commander.

Progenitus’s signature “protection from everything” prevents the damage dealt by Blasphemous Act, while still allowing me to “choose” it for Duneblast. If this effect proves to be good, I can also throw in Kindred Dominance later.

Other Fun Stuff

Sire of Insanity feels like a big missed opportunity on my first pass. If the idea is to get ahead then lock out my opponents, Sire does double duty by removing any big hands I gave my opponents from wheels and then keeping them that way.

This is an experiment, to really lean on Progenitus as my win-con. It’s one of the few cards that gets around his protection to turn him into a 1-shot kill (with 23 Commander damage).

In Conclusion

We shall see if the mix of less Group Hug, more answers, and little bit of tutoring will be enough to make this deck competitive.

Until next time, happy brewing!