While lifelink helps soften the blow, that life loss adds up quickly in longer games, especially when facing aggressive pods
Sliding will instantly create a bid, and the next bid amount will be based on the current bid and the next increment: You can create a max bid to bid automatically for you up to your max bid
This is a very powerful effect for any aggressive deck, letting you tap the best blocker your opponent has and swinging a combat in your favor
The two ways around this are to either be so fast and so dominant that you overwhelm the table before anyone can mount a response an inconsistent strategy at best or you fill your deck with enough protection and recursion that you can survive long enough to exploit an opening
My opinion did slightly change on Cecil, Dark Knight because I dont have a Deaths Shadow archetype in my cube (which is hard to do in singleton) but someone did draft a pretty sweet deck that technically went undefeated in the swiss rounds (going 3-0) but lost to me, (who sat out since we had an odd number of drafters - I ended up going 2-0 from playing that player and someone else.) This was the deck: Ive also posted it on Moxfield
It also reinforces why I think it's become one of the best card games despite only being a couple of years old
