What happened Amaryllis?

Well, last week at locals, Amaryllis unfortunately went 1-3 out of all the matches. I believe only one of them I lost 0-2 (Xsabers) but it was still upsetting nonetheless. Most of the losses were all about the opponent exploding before I can stop them or me not drawing into any good cards. So today we'll be talking about strategy and any fixes we can make.

#1. The Side Deck
Lately I've been siding in Cloak and Dagger against many key cards in certain decks. Examples of these are Xsaber Darksoul and Machina Fortress. Turn 1 It is great to get this card out; later in the duel it falls behind in playability. Another issue with C&D is the fact that it is a deterrent, and not prevention. Mind Crush and maybe even trap dustshoot could be better cards in most situations than C&D would be. The rest of the side consists of the normal Gladiator Beast Hate, Infernity Hate, Monarch Hate, 1 Gottoms and 1 Starlight. I will be replacing the 3 cloaks with the 2 firstly named traps and 1 Ceasefire.

#2. Play Style
Amaryllis isn't a deck where I necessarily have a concrete path I can follow and reach the same end. It's not so much as a toolbox, but rather a best-case scenario strategy. Let's take an opening hand as an example.
(1)Mark of the Rose, (2)Miracle Fertilizer, (3)Dandylion, (4)Monster Reborn, (5) Amaryllis, (6)Tytannial.
Albeit a very very lackluster hand, it is not an autoloss. Turn 1 I get to set dandy and then I draw into Amarallyis; pass that turn, opponent sets up more powerful plays and probably destroy my tokens, maybe even deal damage. Turn 3 I draw into card trooper, mill 3 which is worse cards lol. Well, maybe that was a bad example, but what I mean to say is, there are so many options with cards like MotRose, Foolish Burial and Lonefire that it is very difficult to figure out what the best play is. Very often, on the matches that I lose, I do not play Amaryllis. So because of that you would think that my #1 priority should be getting Amrayllis in the grave, even though thinning out those volcanic counters and providing discards for trade-in would be more optimal to prevent dead cards in the hand.

#3 Dead Cards in the deck
Let's list ALL the cards that have the potential of being dead and/or do not work towards the goals of the deck.
1 Miracle Fertilizer
1 Mark of the Rose
1 Spore
1 Return From the Different Dimension
1 Naturia Beans
2 Volcanic Counter
3 Trade-In
1 Sangan
1 Gravirose
As you can see, the utility is there in all the cards, yet the possibility of being dead is the highest with these (barring the obvious tytannial and Amaryllis). In all honesty, there arent too many cards to swap out. Nothing offers the kind of draw power that Trade-In has that doesn't give your opponent an advantage too.

So yeah. We'll be doing a few tweaks to the way we play a deck as a whole. Inbetween playing with Intro to Chaos(which is nearing completion!) and Koakis, I will continue to build and maximize Amaryllis.