You Make The Play: Solution?

If you haven't seen the original post, I'll just repost the situation:

Him (W/R, 6 life, 2 cards in hand):
5/4 Highland Barbarian (2/1 and 3 +1/+1 counters), equipped with Blade of the Bloodchief
4/4 Tuktuk Grunts (2/2 with 2 +1/+1 counters)
7 land

Me (G/B, 7 life, 0 cards, on top of deck Kalitas, Bloodchief of Ghet)
2/2 Oran-Rief Survivalist (1/1 with 1 +1/+1 counters)
2/2 Vampire Lacerator
2/2 tapped Timbermaw Larva
3/2 tapped Guul Draz Vampire equipped with Explorer Scope
3 Forests
3 Swamps
1 Piranha Marsh

He attacks with his two guys. How do you block?


Here's what actually happened:
I double chump and his 5/4 becomes a 7/6. He plays a Kor Sanctifiers and destroys my Explorer's Scope, which is irrelevant. I untap and draw my Kalitas. I decide that I'm only going to give him one draw phase to get out of this one, so I attack with just my 3/2 Intimidate guy to put him to 3. The 5/5 comes down and my plan is to chump his two bigs and take 2. If he draws something like Journey to Nowhere, I can still chump the biggest guy and also let the 4/4 through and go to 1. I suppose the commons I'd lose to are the Red burn spells to my 2/2 if he equips his 4/4 first, but he has to draw those off the top, which is precisely why I attacked him to 3.

He drew Murasa Pyromancer off the top to burn my 2/2 and buff the Tuktuk Grunts off the Ally bonus and attacked for 7. Darn.

I started writing out on paper what the plays should be if he has certain hands, i.e. combinations of burn, guy, or non-burn removal. It was actually pretty darn complex and I couldn't bring myself to finish it all the way, and even what I did I stopped branching at the end of my turn and evaluated what the board would be.

What I realized is that such deep analysis, unless you are a really fast thinker (and I know people like this), cannot be done in real-time situations. Writing this play analysis out fully would have probably taken me an hour, how much would I tank if I really wanted to do this analysis?

This is where we must rely on heuristics and shortcuts: what is usually the right play in this situation? Play experience helps here; one of the best players I've met, in a conversation about the idea of Magic strategy guides ala Patrick Chapin, said to get better, said to get better "Just play more". Sure, a computer could compute the entire choice tree and find the right play, but you're not a computer. So much Magic strategy ends in generalizing statements like "You'll probably be in fine shape now" without really much quantification.

The point of all this was that maybe the kind of analysis I wanted to do, at least to the level of detail I wanted to do, was overkill, but maybe it's good to go through such analysis so that it becomes intuitive. I don't think I'm going to type up my notes on the play, I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader.

As for my conclusion about the play, I think the double block was right at a very cursory level, i.e. I lose to common burn if I let one guy through, but attacking with the 3/2 was wrong, in the case of what actually happened, and that untapping with the 5/5 will actually swing the board way in my favor: the 5/5 kills a big and gives me a big if he doesn't topdeck a Magma Rift or Journey to Nowhere right away, and I'd just chump with my 3/2 and 2/2 if he decides to attack so that I can take control of the board when I untap, and he really has to topdeck to take the game back. I guess I was thinking too much in terms of tempo and denying him draw phases and not enough about board advantage and inevitability.