Also having the bottom end of your cascade chain snagged out from under you with Thought Hemorrhage is unfortunate, which seems like a definite weakness to the deck. I’ve been playing around with Sedraxis Specter in this deck, and it works out rather well.

Sedraxis Specter is a card you can easily pitch to blightning and it would end your cascade chain. It by itself is card advantage, being able to unearth for a single attack after it dies. Jacob Van Lunen explained it beautifully, “For example, if your opponent casts a Blightning of his or her own, you discard Sedraxis Specter and another card. Your opponent used one card to take two cards and deal you 3 damage. Then you untap, unearth your Sedraxis Specter, and attack. Your opponent loses another card and takes the same 3 damage.”

It’s also a creature that comes down early and isn’t afraid to block those small aggro creatures, one of the things I think this deck has trouble with (up until the 5 turn).

You dilute your bottom-end cascade chain slightly, but I think it ends up making games less like a lottery.

As for the mini-You make the play. The exotic orchard is the land to play, the sooner you can get the baneslayer angel out the better. Most optimistically you draw a arid mesa and cash that in for a plains the next turn, have enough mana for the baneslayer. Hopefully you draw into a second baneslayer, at which point you can easily race a single knight with a sledge. If he discards no lands off the blightning, and doesn’t draw a fetch the next turn, it will be a 6/6. If he discards two lands (which I find unlikely since he discarded a enlisted wurm before discarding another land) it will be an 8/8, and a 9/9 at the largest. So at the largest I would say a 7/7. One of the cards in his hand is probably a baneslayer or another enlisted wurm. Playing the exotic orchard also opens up the possibility of drawing a captured sunlight, which would help slow down the game just slightly.

The safe play is to play the savage lands, which means that by turn 6 you will definitely have a creature. Even if you play the exotic orchard now, there is no guarantee you will be able to play baneslayer turn 5 or even the enlisted wurm turn 6. But, by going with the safe play the game may be over by turn 6. He may draw a bloodbraid and that would most likely end the game by turn 6, never allowing you to play the wurm. It’s safe, but it’s not the best play.

It all comes down to luck really, if you draw an arid messa, another exotic orchard, or a plains, you have a good chance of winning regardless of if he gets a bloodbraid, if you don’t draw another white source and he gets a bloodbraid then you may never get to turn 6 or even have anything to cast turn 6.

It’s kind of exciting how many possible outcomes there are in this situation, the board could be overturned in an instant depending on who draws what.

Your story has been summoned to the battlefield – Trackback from MTGBattlefield…

Second, you didn’t tell us what you boarded out, or if you boarded in anything other than Bolts, which would make this easier. But I agree with xny’s analysis except you can’t really go to town with the Angel. The Knight will be unreasonably large; large enough to get past Angel by itself (eot, sac Forest to get a fetch, sac fetch. Equip Sledge and attack with a 8/8, and that’s assuming he didn’t have any more lands in hand). If you didn’t board in a permanent solution like Maelstrom Pulse, you’re likely to need at least Wurm and Angel to beat it. Luckily, he’ll have no cards in hand and you’ve got good ones. Hopefully, the Wurm turns up some goodies.

4 Blightning
4 Esper Charm

3 Ajani Vengeant
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Captured Sunlight

4 Baneslayer Angel
4 Bituminous Blast
3 Deny Reality

3 Enlisted Wurm

2 Mountain
2 Plains
1 Swamp
1 Forest
1 Island
1 Arid Mesa
1 Marsh Flats
1 Misty Rainforest
1 Scalding Tarn
1 Verdant Catacombs
3 Arcane Sanctum
2 Jungle Shrine
4 Rupture Spire
3 Savage Lands
2 Seaside Citadel
1 Crumbling Necropolis

Sideboard
3 Pyroclasm
3 Jund Charm
2 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Rhox War Monk
3 Wall of Reverence

needing UBW, RB, RW, RG, GW, UB, and WW… a mix of the fetchlands with a slight leaning towards red and white seemed good– red for early plays and white for ms. angel. the mana base has been VERY solid, and you absolutely need rupture spire. there will be games where you don’t play a spell pre-board until turn 4, so be ready for those.

i’ve been playtesting this deck for 3 weeks or so with help from the goodgamery crew– in particular, karl kahn and jarrod bright. jarrod pretty much redid the manabase from the ground up and it’s been working quite well. i’ve been playtesting mostly with jarvis yu and a few other ggers that had the beta. the results i’ve had are pretty different from yours.

your matchup against the control decks is slam-dunk unbeatable, especially with ajani v. attacking cards and mana at the same time is very powerful and i typically don’t board against them… you don’t want to disrupt your a-game, and ajani is a win condition all by himself if he has to be. you don’t need the 4th wurm to finish things off… if you get to 6 mana, you win. the deck is very good at being aggressive, as i’m sure you’ve found– they always run out of threats very quickly and then suddenly on turn 5 they’re at 9 life and have no relevant permanents.

however, this is not a metagame that has a lot of control decks– it’s dominated by aggro. i’m not too worried about jund, as you can go quite anti-aggro in the sideboard. it originally had day of judgment in it, but i don’t think that’s necessary if you want to beat jund… their creatures are a little bigger so you can keep the pre-board plan, bring in wall of reverence, or find some combination thereof. they’re one of the few decks where both of your plans are good. the aggro decks were part of the reason why we tested out ajani vengeant in the maindeck and it has been a smashing success– it really hurts jund a lot if you hit them for four cards and then lock down their only threat. boros landfall, on the other hand…

i’m sure you know calcano, and i hope you’ve playtested against his deck. it’s a nightmare. i have been t4′ed through a rhox war monk multiple times post-board. the matchup is about 50/50 after you bring in 13 cards and take out 3 denies, 8 mind rots, and 2 wurms. maybe the wurms shouldn’t come out, but i’ve never survived long enough to use them or need them. they have so much burn and they have a ton of draws where you’re just dead before you can do ANYTHING.

i’m not certain that this is the right choice in this metagame. it is a powerful strategy and you have two very potent plans, but you’re so slow to get off the ground that it might not be worth it. if goblin ruinblaster is played widely enough, the deck may no longer be able to win a tournament.