Agreed, IT IS hard to win with a deck that only has seven win conditions in the deck and they all cost six mana against multiple counter spells. Which is why I would play combo decks that are more resilient (like Twin) over a deck like this, which is neat but terrible.

The reason I use “day one” prices vs a theoretical long term price is because I am comparing cracking boxes to just preordering the cards I feel I need. If I preordered those cards, that’s the price I would have paid.

Beyond that, if you use any other price then how can you really account for it? If I wait long enough, basically every card in the box is going to be worth $1 or less with a few exceptions so it’s hard to determine when that realistic “line” is.

And you’re right, I did get lucky with two Ugins, but I was also unlucky with zero Monastery Mentors or Whisperwood Elementals so in theory these sorts of things balance themselves out in the aggregate. Also getting complete turds for all my foils did not help pad my results. I admit going into this set my instinct was to not buy any boxes, but I indulged myself because I’m an addict and for writing this article … this time I ended up slightly above, but this is definitely a set that is not an “auto-buy” like Khans of Tarkir was at release.

I did watch the finals. One game the Bloom Titan pilot lost to Blood Moon. That is a weakness for sure.

The strategy lost other games to MULTIPLE counterspells, not 1. In at least one instance pilot had pact of negation in hand (fetched by Tolaria West). But he couldn’t win through Remand + Dispel + another counter in the opponent’s hand.

But ask any combo player – it’s tough to win through 3 counterspells no matter how resilient your deck is.

I wanted to kick the can down the road a little further with the box portion of the article, but I had already done that a couple times so I shoehorned it in.

Did you watch the finals? He lost three games because his hands were literally full of do-nothing garbage.

The deck is a glass cannon that is complicated to play, draw dependent, and typically folds to a counterspell. There are a number of combo decks that are more consistent, resilient, AND easier to play.

I just don’t think it’s a good deck choice.

Is it really fair to compare Bloom Titan to Belcher? For one, the Titan deck has multiple ways of winning (Hive Mind + Pact or Primeval Titan), the sideboard is transformational, and the deck actually made the finals of a PT (Ok, there’s no Legacy PT so that’s not a fair comparison). I also keep hearing there were only 4 pilots of the Bloom Titan deck last weekend. One made the finals of the PT and one lost their win-and-in.

If 20 players had run the deck, it would likely have had an even stronger showing.

I guess time will tell, but I’m not so quick to rule out the Bloom Titan deck this time. The last two times, I was right there with you. But now that Wizards keeps banning good cards and unbanning bad cards, it’s only a matter of time before bad decks become good.

All that being said, you’re right on one thing: sell into the hype.