Eating My Words

     Sometime ago I said that werewolves don't need burn.  Well, I backtracked and incorporated Brimstone Volley just to see if it could deal with pesky life gain, flyers, planeswalkers, and blockers.  I was only able to test it against a friend's UW Tempo deck and it didn't prove crucial in the matchup as he just bounced my dudes instead of killing them.  Sphinx's Revelation put his life above my reach and the red spell became a defensive weapon as it killed his creatures deigning to carry Runechanter's Pike to my head.

     It was an even match, one that would have been tilted in my favor if I had Cavern of Souls to prevent his countermagic on stuff that he had bounced back to my hand with Unsummon or to the top of my library with Azorius Charm.  Still I was wary of adding the expensive land since it couldn't be used to activate my Kessig Wolf Run or cast spells like Moonmist.  I also felt that the Ground Seal in the sideboard would neuter his deck, preventing him from using flashback effectively.

     Here was the list I used earlier:

     Creatures: 26

     4 Reckless Waif

     4 Wolfbitten Captive

     4 Mayor of Avabruck

     2 Immerwolf

     4 Kruin Outlaw

     4 Daybreak Ranger

     4 Huntmaster of the Fells

     Spells: 11

     4 Full Moon's Rise

     3 Moonmist

     4 Brimstone Volley

     Lands: 23

     2 Kessig Wolf Run

     4 Rootbound Crag

     9 Mountain

     8 Forest

     Sideboard: 15

     1 Moonmist

     3 Sundering Growth

     4 Instigator Gang

     3 Ground Seal

     2 Electrickery

     2 Immerwolf

     I wasn't able to test the sideboard so I don't have any inkling as to what cards in there are worth it.  The fourth Moonmist is for aggressive decks.  Sundering Growth deals with Keyrunes and Detention Spheres.  Instigator Gang is for when I want to go big and trample all over someone.  Ground Seal handicaps reanimator strategies and decks relying on flashback or Angel of Serenity to win.  Immerwolf is for those games when I need my werewolves to remain their monstrous selves and not revert to their small human forms.  Lastly, Electrickery is for tokens and any deck that relies on 1/1 critters to get things going.

     Playing those games against my friend helped me see the importance of having creatures with hexproof.  It was debilitating to have my guys go to the top of my library and therefore prevent me from drawing something new.  I couldn't pump Krallenhorde Killer with confidence because I was afraid of losing an entire turn's mana to a bounce spell. 

     What became clearer as I tested this version of the deck was that I needed to go faster to beat the slow, ponderous, but overwhelmingly powerful decks littering the metagame at this point.  Brimstone Volley was certainly a step towards this but without further data I'm not sold on it beating Geist of Saint Traft, Thragtusk, and Angel of Serenity anytime soon.