Nice Play: Simon Goertzen casts Give

In M1G2 of his latest draft video, Simon Goertzen hits land on turn 6 and chooses to pump his Centaur token instead of drawing three cards:

(clarity: this is before playing land for the turn)

The opponent's deck has shown mostly Unleash creatures in the first game. My plan, watching, was to try and win by drawing some good spells.

Goertzen's plan, it turns out, is to use Give un-fused make a 6/6 and knock the opponent to 6 life, forcing a tough block next turn, and leaving himself the spare mana to play a Disciple of the Old Ways.

"Playing Give on the Spire Tracer doesn't make a lot of sense, because we know he has the Horror now. So we could put it on the Centaur and get in for 7, bringing our opponent down to 6, forcing him to block the Centaur next turn or have an immediate answer to it. I think that's our best line.

"The alternative would be to try to draw some additional cards here, but I don't think that's getting us very far. If we draw three here, then everything we have is basically dominated by his board, and we only bring him down to 12, so I kind of like being more aggressive here."

It's a gamble that the opponent doesn't have removal -- we haven't seen removal yet, but it hasn't really been necessary yet. We have seen a Thrill-Kill Assassin (so far uncastable) from the opponent, as well as a Psychic Strike (which might be in hand, since the opponent played no spell on turn 4).

Give + attack plays around the Psychic Strike, and by letting the Centaur get past the 3/4 blocker, it does 6 points of damage even if the Centaur doesn't live. Considering the board and the opponent's 4 cards, we don't have the best odds of winning in any case, but Goertzen makes a bold risk here to try and steal the game.