Recently, my good friend Dan and I started talking about the upcoming PT in Spain. Neither of us are Q'd, but we love the theory-crafting of it all. Especially since it has one of our favorite decks in it, Desire.
We play-tested it extensively for the previous PTQ's, but felt we still needed more time and a little more input. Tweaks needed to be made but we did not know what. A few things we knew after testing it were that it beat aggro, CB decks, TEPS, and Ichorid. TEPS was by far the easiest matchup. Its worst fears were descibed below the list.
Here is the list I last had.
4 Sleight of Hand
4 Sins of the Past
4 Minds Desire
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Careful Study
4 Mental Note
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Lotus Bloom
2 Tendrils of Agony
3 Echoing Truth
3 Sensei's Divining Top
4 Chrome Mox
1 Hallowed Fountain
1 Swamp
4 Island
2 Watery Grave
4 Flooded Strand
4 Polluted Delta
That's the last list I found of it. It's a terrible list than what we eventually had.
When we played it at the first PTQ of the season my worst fears were facing off against all of the Chant decks that suddenly popped up. Trickbind was introduced to the format and everyone was worried TEPS would wreck them. Even Dredge/Ichorid decks had some SB hate spill onto this Desire build.
I ended up losing horribly to Tog, 2 scepter decks and beating the snot out of TEPS. My friend who played the same deck but with Meddling Mages in the board (we could only find 4, so I did not play any. This also explains the Hallowed Fountain MD, in case you were wondering). He was doing very well. Beating a few aggro decks, Tooth(oddly enough with Meddling Mage beatdown), and I believe an Ichorid deck. Which he won the 3rd game with 2 cards in hand and Minds Desire'ing for 2 and hitting a Sins which picked up another Desire. Pretty insane. His opponent was a little furious.
We stopped playing the deck as WAYYYYY too many people were packing a lot of hate.
What I liked about the deck.
- Often your opponent doesn't really know what your playing.
What I did not like about the deck.
- The Resurgence in everyone playing chant was very difficult to maneuver around. Even though we prepared for it. It seemed to be a lot weaker to hate. On the same coin, however, you would when games just on the back of your opponent keeping a sub-par hand against you expecting to draw hate.
- I felt if needed more testing. More fine tuning. Something was missing...
- I could not for the life of me find 4 extra Meddling Mage's for the SB, lol!
What do I like about the deck now? Simple:
4 Sleight of Hand
4 Sins of the Past
4 Minds Desire
4 Cabal Ritual
4 Careful Study
4 Ponder
4 Infernal Tutor
4 Lotus Bloom
2 Tendrils of Agony
2 Chain of Vapor
1 Echoing Truth
4 Pact of Negation
4 Chrome Mox
2 Swamp
2 Watery Grave
3 Flooded Strand
4 Island
4 Polluted Delta
THAT'S WHY. Pact of Negation & Ponder really make the deck a lot better.
A few people may ask why I did not run Chain of Vapor before. The reason was Chalice for ONE at the time hurt. Two was close to game ending. And most times it was. The reason Chains are in there now is simply the format is too fast for Chalice to effectively take control of a game. Spell Snare is so much more prevalent and needed for this metagame. Chalice has to boarded in. Really...who WANTS to board them in? Only one deck does play any at all and it maybe going the way of the Dodo.
I have the SB but I want to absolutely make sure it is what the deck needs before posting it.
I cannot wait for Lorwyn to come out. Maybe some more broken stuff to toy around with or some new hate to meddle with. I really hope anyone who reads this takes the time to learn the deck. Feel free add some constructive criticism .
