Got some questions on stream about my PT Philly match against @wrapter after some slanderous accusations of results oriented testing by @lsv on LR (as presented to me—I haven’t listened). Regardless of whether my reasoning was right, it was based in principle, not results...

A majority of games that I have a chance of winning in the matchup are games where I have Inkmoth Nexus. When I have Nexus, Josh can’t afford to tap out, because I could kill him at any point, and he has a lot of interaction. I have a lot of counterplay for his interaction.

This leads to a slower game than either deck normally plays that revolves more around attrition, as we both have more cards dedicated to trading where those slots are usually dedicated to winning. Choosing to draw is better in attrition games than tempo games, but not enough...

The shift toward attrition lowers the bar, but there’s still enough tempo that it’s better to be on the play, except that, because my deck has a lot of air and I’m planning to play a longer game, flooding out becomes a problem. To account for this. I sided out multiple lands.

With the lower land count, my deck needed the extra card to function, just in terms of hitting enough lands early to play the game. Between that and the focus on attrition, I believed it was better to be on the draw. Was that decision right? I don’t know. I think it’s close.

Additional thought on why, in hindsight, I think this choice was reasonable. Others (ex: Michael Rapp’s article about winning GP Toronto) have suggested that you want to choose draw in the Grixis Shadow mirror. I think similar principles (lots of cheap interaction) apply here.