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It’s been a while since I’ve written anything, but I’ve been looking around getting ready for states, and I always feel like writing these help me. I’m currently tinkering around with a lot of different decks, in fact I have 6 of them proxied on my desk as I write this. Now I’m going to put it out there right now that I don’t test nearly as much as I would like too, but I do feel like I have a pretty good grasp of the format and I can at least offer you my perspectives and opinions, which can’t hurt. I figured since Faeries seems to be in the mix a lot of the time I’d start with it. That and I can’t seem to settle on a correct build to test with so this little exercise should help me with that, if nothing else. Here are a few deck lists for us to spring board with, for now I’ll leave the sideboard out. Faeries by Stuart Wright
4 Mistbind Clique
4 Scion Of Oona
4 Spellstutter Sprite
4 Agony Warp
4 Cryptic Command
2 Negate
3 Remove Soul
3 Jace Beleren
3 Ponder
4 Bitterblossom
6 Island
1 Swamp
2 Faerie Conclave
4 Mutavault
4 Secluded Glen
4 Sunken Ruins
4 Underground River Faeries by Alex Bertoncini
4 Mistbind Clique
4 Scion Of Oona
3 Sower Of Temptation
4 Spellstutter Sprite
1 Loxodon Warhammer
4 Agony Warp
4 Cryptic Command
3 Remove Soul
2 Jace Beleren
2 Thoughtseize
4 Bitterblossom
4 Island
1 Swamp
4 Faerie Conclave
4 Mutavault
4 Secluded Glen
4 Sunken Ruins
4 Underground River Faeries by LSV
4 Mistbind Clique
3 Scion Of Oona
3 Sower Of Temptation
4 Spellstutter Sprite
2 Vendilion Clique
4 Agony Warp
4 Cryptic Command
2 Remove Soul
3 Jace Beleren
3 Thoughtseize
4 Bitterblossom
4 Island
3 Swamp
1 Faerie Conclave
4 Mutavault
4 Secluded Glen
4 Sunken Ruins
4 Underground River While most of these decks are pretty similar they have a few key differences that I think really sets them apart in they play. Let’s start with the doods. The only major differences here are with Vendilion Clique and Sower Of Temptation. First of all I like Sower of Temptation. It’s a good answer to a lot of tough threats and is a respectable beater with a Scion Of Oona in play. It can deal with pretty much any monster in the format and since you are normally able to protect it pretty well I think it’s better than any of the other options you might have. Eyeblight’s Ending is fine, but a little expensive and splashing into white for something like Runed Halo or Condemn is just not something that appeals to me. So I’m going to side with LSV and Alex on this one. Now Vendilion Clique, on the other hand, I’m not so sure about. I liked this guy a lot when Wren's Run Vanquisher was all over the place, but now I don’t think he gets the job done. For basically the same effect you can play Thoughtseize at one mana instead of three, and they don’t get a card back. As much as I respect LSV I’m going to disagree with him on this one. I’d rather play cheaper spells. I know this guy could also be considered a threat, but I don’t know. I also don’t like the idea of drawing more than one of them. So for now I’m going to leave them out. That leaves us with only one more question to consider in regards to doods. 3 Scions or 4? Now I can understand why you might want to leave on of these guys on the sideline. They don’t do very much on their own and can be a bit clunky if you draw them at the same time with nothing else to back them up. That said they are really good at protecting the spells you need to win, namely Bitterblossom and Mistbind Clique, and they can be quite good in multiples if you have a Bitterblossom in play. I think those are reason enough to play 4. That leaves us with the following doods. 4 Mistbind Clique
4 Scion Of Oona
3 Sower Of Temptation
4 Spellstutter Sprite Not all that surprising, but they will certainly get the job done. From here I think we can examine the spells. Part of this is really easy so I’ll take of that quickly and move on from there. 4 Agony Warp
4 Cryptic Command 4 Bitterblossom These cards don’t really need any mentioning, but I’ll quick go over them anyways. Agony Warp is almost like a Lightning Helix in that you are going to get a 3 toughness dood and ‘gain’ 3 life by fogging another dood. It certainly beats the pants of Nameless Inversion. It’s by far the best removal spell for this spot. If you are not playing Cryptic Command I’d question whether or not you are playing the right deck. White Weenie and Red Deck are ok decks, and you certainly can win with them, but I’m going to side with Adrian Sullivan on this one. Cryptic Command is the defining card of this format, I think, and I have a hard time justifying not playing it. As for Bitterblossom, well . . . It’s Bitterblossom . . . That pretty much covers it. From here we have a few decisions to make. Let’s start with the permission. All of the decks are playing some number of Remove Soul and that’s probably correct. I’ve never liked Broken Ambitions and playing 3cc counter magic seems very bad unless you are getting something out of the deal. So that means we could consider Faerie Trickery or Dream Fracture neither of which seem all that appealing. That brings me to Negate. Man do I hate this card. Sure it counters Cryptic Command and maybe a burn spell, but it certainly doesn’t counter anything that you really need it to that, on average, Scion or Cryptic Command won’t counter. The other interesting point to make it is only really good in match ups that are already in Faeries favor so why not work on shoring up the bad ones? At this point I think I’m willing to just stick with Remove Soul and move onto the other spells. Here’s the deck so far. 4 Mistbind Clique
4 Scion Of Oona
3 Sower Of Temptation
4 Spellstutter Sprite 4 Agony Warp
4 Cryptic Command 4 Bitterblossom 3 Remove Soul We’ve made it to the half way mark and everything up until this point has been pretty easy. It seems that 25 land seems to be the correct number so that leaves us with 5 more cards to consider. In the lists above the remaining for consideration cards are: Thoughtseize, Jace Beleren, Ponder, and Loxodon Warhammer. Ponder is certainly a fine card, and the deck does seem to be lacking some much need card advantage, but I just don’t feel like this does the job better than Jace a card I do feel is likely to make the main deck. Jace is extremely good in the current meta-game. The format is pretty light on ways to deal with a Planeswalker other than turning doods sideways, and Bitterblossom does a good job of defending against that. Jace seems like a shoe-in to make it into the deck. Thoughtseize is an all around good card. I can’t think of anything other than the mirror in which you really want to have it, but it makes resolving things like Sower Of Temptation easier and answers a lot of things you might other wise have trouble with. I could go either way on this card. At the very least I like it in the board to bring in against other Faerie decks. As for the misers Loxodon Warhammer I really don’t know what to say. I’m sure Alex won more than a few games by just ripping this card off the top, but I’m not normally a fan of cards like this. This is one case where I think a little testing might be the only way to determine whether or not to include it. Before I make a choice there are a few other options I’d like to consider. The first is a miser card of my own, Oona, Queen of the Fae. This card is just so powerful that is tends to end games if you resolve it and then get to untap with it in play. Like I said I’m not normally a fan of miser cards, but I think this deck is asking for one. The cards you want to play take up so much room that we don’t really have the luxury of adding in another tool to deal with specific problems, and that sort of situation lends it self to powerful one-ofs like Oona. The other thing I really want to consider is adding in one more land. This deck is slick and efficient, but something that I almost always do when I’m working on a deck is add more lands. It’s a sort of well known fact that Kai Budde always* had one more land, and with good reason. Losing to mana screw can happen to anyone, but it is easier to win when you are flooded than when you are short, this is an attempt to make sure that when the screw hits you it’s a flood and not a short. I’m certain that I want to add in this land so with that in mind we have this. 4 Mistbind Clique
4 Scion Of Oona
3 Sower Of Temptation
4 Spellstutter Sprite 4 Agony Warp
4 Cryptic Command 4 Bitterblossom 3 Remove Soul 3 Jace Beleren 1 Miser Card 26 Lands That leaves us with only the mana to figure out and to determine the miser card. The miser card can only really be determined through testing so I’ll leave that for each of you to decide on your own. This just leaves the mana. The only real differences in the lists above are the number of man lands. Because playing more or less man lands will affect the number of basic land you play and the core set of dual lands is pretty obvious. Since we are playing 26 lands I think that means we want to get as much out of them as possible so I’m leaning towards the full suite of 8. Since we don’t have any turn one plays we won’t mind a Faerie Conclave on turn one anyways. Before you people were only running 2 of them because a turn one Ancestral Vision but that’s not something we need to worry about any more. When you put everything together that gives us this. 4 Mistbind Clique
4 Scion Of Oona
3 Sower Of Temptation
4 Spellstutter Sprite 4 Agony Warp
4 Cryptic Command 4 Bitterblossom 3 Remove Soul 3 Jace Beleren 1 Miser Card 5 Island
1 Swamp
4 Faerie Conclave
4 Mutavault
4 Secluded Glen
4 Sunken Ruins
4 Underground River There may not be a lot of innovation in this list, but I don’t think innovation is something that goes well with Faeries. All of the parts work well together and when you start messing with that you just gum up the works. Leave the innovation for the sideboard and just keep your finely tuned machine running the way it should be in the main deck. Speaking of sideboards, that is something that I really hate writing about. Honestly I can sit and guesstimate all day as to what it should be but the truth is the right sideboard is almost always different at each event. So instead of giving 15 cards I’ll just go over some of the cards that I think are good and leave you to decide based on your local meta-game. Faeries worst match is probably Red Deck. With that in mind Flashfreeze seems like a really good card if you expect to see a lot of it. Other than dipping into white I can’t really think of a better way to deal with it. Maybe that is why Alex played a miser Loxodon Warhammer. The mirror I think comes down mostly to who resolves a Bitterblossom first and can protect it. The obvious card here is Thoughtseize. It can also be good against various other decks that you might not foresee. Thoughtseize is just one of those solid cards that you can’t really go wrong with. Glen Elendra Archmage is an absolute beating against all of the control decks. It’s very hard for them to deal with and you it doesn’t really hurt you any all because it’s still a 2/2 flier. I think this card is better than Negate, but if you like Negate then play it. Infest is pretty much the only mass removal left for Faeries. It’s really only good against White Weenie, but it I’m told that the match up is really hard to win with out it. This is something that I haven’t tested, but the principle is sound. Puppeteer Clique is also pretty good against Demigod of Revenge and has some nifty interactions with Cloudthresher. I think I’ve covered everything you might want to know about Faeries other than how to play it correctly, which is something I’m not even sure I could tell you anyways. The deck is still solid, and certainly gives you as good a chance of winning as any other deck might. If you have any questions or comments about what I’ve written I encourage you to respond. I’m going to try and do a few more of these for 5CC and such. Until next time. BOB
Tags: States Standard Faeries
So I was at PTQ Berlin in Madison and I experienced my first top 8. That sentence is a little misleading because I wasn’t playing, I was judging. It was, however, a great experience and I think I might have found my place in the world of magic, at least as far as constructed goes. I can’t see myself playing in too many constructed tournaments anytime soon, well maybe some that I can’t judge at, but if you’re ever headed for a constructed event in Madison look to see me in the stripes. I do still, however, love, love, love to play limited and I will do so as often as I can. So what was it like my first time on the floor, to be honest it was little boring at times. I was told that it was because this was a well defined format and most of the people in the room, especially after the first couple of rounds pretty much knew what was going on. That said I did get a few brain busters. One of which Pete Jahn wrote about in his article over at start city. If you don’t read him regularly I’d recommend that you do because if anything he always has something informative in his articles. Anyways it goes like this Rashad Miller, who I’m sure some of you have heard of, was playing Elementals with a board that consisted of Sower, Lark, Soulstoke, and a Harbinger. His opponent who was playing merfolk had two random merfolk in play. Rashad attacked with Sower and Lark. At this point his opponent yelled judge, and as I was the only one on the floor at the time I rushed off to see what was up. It turned out he had a Mirrorweave in his hand and wanted to know if he Mirrorweaved Lark and then blocked would he be able to bring back the guys that he blocked with using the Lark trigger. The answer of course is yes. So he thinks for a bit and weaves the Lark. In response Rashad stokes out a Mulldrifter. I asked him about it afterwards and he was looking for a way to kill his Lark, but luckily for him he didn’t find one. So some blocking happens and this is where one of the slickest Jedi mind tricks I’ve ever seen happens. The merfolk player asks what happens, and I tell him Rashad’s triggers will go on the stack first, then his, and then they will resolve accordingly. The guy is a little upset that Rashad is going to get to Sower on of his guys, and I just shrug. Then Rashad noshalantly says, “I guess I’ll target my Sower twice.” He only had one legal target so he targeted it once with each Lark trigger. This totally throws the other guy off and he only targets two guys! I’m pretty blown away, but I can’t really do anything about it because he didn’t break any rules. He could’ve gotten back several Silvergill Adepts and a few lords, but instead just got back one Adept and a Reejery, which was promptly stolen. My favorite thing about all of it was at EOT the Mulldrifter that had been stoked into play died as a Lark and just brought itself right back into play, sick. This does bring one thing about judging that really gets to me, having to watch people make terrible plays. I had a guy call me over and ask me if Firespout would kill his Forge-Tender. I informed him that pro-red meant that it would not, and he nodded and quickly put a Stalwart and a Knight of the Meadowgrain into his graveyard, it was painful. The other part of this is real life mis-clicking, and it happens a lot. Using shortcuts can be good and all, but don’t shortcut yourself right into a loss. This happens most of the time with the Combat step. The combat phase has several steps the first of which is The Beginning of Combat step, where each play gets a chance to play spells or abilities. This is where you would play your, tap effects most of the time. Once you pass up your chance to do it you can’t rewind and do it over, not at a competitive REL. So please be very careful when you speak around the combat step. Don’t say “attackers”, if you mean “beginning of combat” because it will bite you in the butt, I promise. The second complex call I had on the day came much later in the rounds. Player A was being attack by Player B’s Chameleon Colossus. He blocked with two dudes and then cast Mirroweave targeting his Knight of the Meadowgrain. In response Player B activated his Colossus twice. Judge! I hurried over and was asked how big the Colossus was. Do you know? I’ll tell you at the end of this, it’ll be like a fun little game. The last tricky call I had all day involved both Mirrorweave and Mutavault, but it’s not the one your thinking it is. I can’t remember what the exact situation was, but two Mutavaults were attacking from the faeries side of the table along with some other small flying things, and everything had been mirrorweaved into some small not flying kithken. The kithkin player then attempted to play something along the lines of Turn to Mist, which the Faerie player tried to counter with a Spellstutter Sprite. Judge! There seemed to be some confusion over whether or not the Faerie player controled enough faeries for the spell to be countered. Interestingly enough he did. You see because of the way Layers work even when you play a Mirrorweave and it turns Mutavault into say a Goldmeadow Stalwart, it is still a changeling. In fact it’s also still a 2/2. You see the continuous affect generated by Mutavault’s activated ability applies in a later Layer than the copy effect from Mirrorweave so it’s still a 2/2 changeling, but it happens to be named Goldmeadow Stalwart, has a CMC of 1, and is white. It is also still a land. So the Faeries player in fact controlled 3 Faeries and that was good enough, though why he didn’t just counter the Mirrorweave I still don’t know . . . So did you figure out how big that Colossus was? The answer, it will be a 14/14, lifelinking, Kithkin. The +X/+X ability applies in a lower layer than the copy effect so it will remain even if the card suddenly isn’t a 4/4 anymore. Once you know that it’s a simple task of figuring out what the X is. One activation gave it +4/+4, the second +8/+8 for a total of 12. Add the 2 from the knight and there you have it. I would give you a top 8 recap, but it’s pretty boring. I watched Faeries win every game it played, and even got to watch two Faerie mirrors! I did see “the mightily named” Jasper Johnson-Epstine be a master by top-decking a Bitterblossom, on turn 2, while on the play, after a turn 1 Thoughtseize from his opponent, 3 times. That’s how you win the mirror folks, it’s really that simple. Unfortunately, he couldn’t do it 4 times and lost in the finals to Justin Meyer. Thems the breaks I guess. Until next time. Bob
Tags: PTQ Block Lorwyn Shadowmoor
For those of you who want to see what happened to me in the GP look HERE. After not making day two my buddies and I scampered off to find us some block decks. The problem was that the one guy who owns most of the block cards couldn’t come with us, and to make things worse he had forgotten to give us the cards we might need before he left to go do whatever it was he was doing. So knowing this I had spent much of my time between rounds looking to see if someone had a block deck I could borrow if any of us didn’t make it to day two. I talked to Mike Pinnegar and he had already lent his out to someone else, but I did get some info on a lot of cool tech. I also tried several guys from Madison, most of whom would go onto to make day two and two of which would go on to top 8, but they all showed up to play limited, and had nothing. For a short time we considered asking Gabe Nassif for one because he had knocked Ryan out of contention for day two and obv didn’t need to play in a PTQ, but none of us could bring ourselves to do it. Sidebar: For those of you who have never seen them in person all of the French pros are incredibly short. I’m pretty sure that Wafo-Tapa is like 4’10” at best. The only exception is Remi Fortier who is like 9 feet tall. It’s really quite awkward to see them all together. So with no decks to borrow we headed back to the room to see what we did have that we could build a deck with. The first thing we noticed was that we had no Bitterblossom so Faeries was out. We also only had 4 Mutavaults so that meant that only one of us could play a Kithkin esque deck. We also didn’t have any Cryptic Commands with us so we couldn’t really play any of the 5 Color Control variants. After a bit more digging I had put together a R/G warriors deck, we had a Kithkin deck, and probably most of an Elf deck. At this point we were feeling pretty bummed until someone said, “We should play this in a deck.” 
There was a little bit of laughter at first, but then I remembered something Mike Pinnegar had told me earlier about Scareblade Elite. “Chameleon Colossus is an Assassin.” It was also as it turns out a Scarecrow, and we were well on are way to making one heck of a deck, and I had a whole pile of those tribal dual lands from Lorwyn so we decided to run with the Changeling thing and had a block version of that old Changeling Zoo deck and we realized that if we wanted to play an Aggro deck that we should probably just be playing Kithkin. So out went the one drops and in came more far. I remembered how sick Masked Admirers was against 5 colors and we realized that this deck was really good at playing Doran on turn 3 so we put some in. After a few test games and a little tinkering we ended up with this, or something similar I don’t have the exact list in front of me. 4 Wren’s Run Vanquisher 3 Scarblade Elite 2 Woodland Changeling 4 Taurean Mauler 2 Doran, The Siege Tower 4 Chameleon Colossus 2 Masked Admirers 2 Reaper King 4 Nameless Inversion 4 Crip Swap 3 Firespout 4 Gilt-Leaf Palace 4 Aunties Hovel 3 Ancient Amphitheater 1 Wanderwine Hub 4 Reflecting Pool 2 Murmuring Bosk 2 Wooded Bastion 1 Sunken Ruins 2 Vivid Grove 1 Vivid Marsh The deck actually tested very well against Kithkin, after we added Firespout, and 5 Color, thanks to Masked Admirers. We didn’t have time to test the deck against Faeries at all, but stuck Wispmares, another Firespout, and something else in the board and hoped it was enough. Ryan shotguned playing it, so I was stuck with Kithkin. Now for some matches that have very little to do with this deck, and some funny stories generated by this deck. Round 1 VS Mike Mike was playing Merfolk. Game one I did some beating down with random white dooders. Then at some point he resolved some kind of card drawing effect, and accidentally pulled to many cards off the top. He hadn’t looked at them, but wasn’t sure how many cards were supposed to be in his hand. So we called a judge. The judge told him to put on card in his had and the other one back on his library. He did that the judge walked away and he drew the card again . . . for no reason . . . So se recalled the judge and this time he got a game loss. What a waste of 20 minutes. Game two was me trying to race Drowner + Judge of Currents. I lost Game three was more of the same. 0-1, 1-2 Round 2 VS Ben Ben was playing Faeries. I don’t remember much of this match except 3xNegate 3xSpectral Procession and Faeries Kithkin. 0-2, 1-4 Meanwhile, Ryan is 2-0 with a deck that we made in about 30 minutes the night before. Not only is he 2-0, but during his Round two match he cast a Reaper King and the guy sitting next to him yells, “That just happened!” needless to say everyone nearby had to stop and take a look at that action. Ryan also said that the look on peoples face when you play a tribal dual land and reveal a Woodland Changeling is just priceless. I did acctually play a few more games, and even won a few, but they were all boring. I ended up going 2-3, and I can say that I don’t suggest to anyone that you play Kithkin as it’s not very interesting to play at all. Ryan got blown out by Fulminator Mages in the next two rounds, and I mean like multiple Mages + recursion, not just one or two. The deck has since been updated some, and while I don’t have the exact new list I do know that the deck now plays a Singleton Hord of Notions, rather than Reaper King. They also cut, Woodland Changeling, for the full set of Dorans and the full set of Scareblades. Ryan took the updated version to a PTQ and was X-1 late into the swiss before finally getting knocked out by Faeries. Which it turns out is very good against this deck. Ryan also says that Masked Admirers probably doesn’t belong in the main deck and something like Kitchen Finks might be better. All in all the GP was probably the most fun I’ve had playing Magic, ever. People who write online about just going to these to hang out are not lying to you. It’s retardly fun and I highly recommend it. Until next time. Bob
Tags: Magic PTQ Block
Ok, so this is a bit late, but you’ll live. Below is an account of my games. I took pretty good notes so I was able to recall most of the action. So instead of a lengthy introduction I’m just going to jump right in. If you want to see my pool and my deck you can find them HERE and HERE. Round 1 VS BJ The thing I remember about BJ is that his deck had some very interesting card choices. He had a main deck Embergale which is not that terrible of a card, but he also had a main deck Fossil Find which I thought was a tad bit odd. When I asked him about the it after the match he said he had had some success with the card, but I’m still a bit skeptical. Game 1 I played a turn 3 Thistledown Duo and turn 4 Safehold Duo and then proceded to play green, white, and blue spells that pumped the them and the game was over in short order. BJ attempted to put up a fight with an early Safehold elite, but put it on top of his library with Aether Tow and instead of playing it again he tried a Scuzzback Marauders which I chump blocked a few times. He didn’t really see much action this game, but my draw was really good even if he had. I brought in Barrenton Cragtreads and Tattermunge Duo because he was playing forests and red dudes. I took out my other hybrid hill giant and duo. Game 2 BJ mulliganed once and didn’t play anything until turn 3 when he played a Giantbaiting. I played a Devoted Druid into a turn 3 Safehold Duo on turn 3. On turn 4 BJ played Fossil find getting back the Giantbaiting, and then attack me with another 4/4, which I took. Over the next few turns I kept adding attackers and he couldn’t keep deal with them all. When I played a Silkbind Faerie he scooped them up. 1-0, 2-0 At this point most of my group was doing well with only two of us losing in the first round. So I was feeling good when I sat down to play the next round. Round 2 VS Andy From what I gathered from conversation Andy had a Round 1 bye which didn’t bother me as much as you might think. I generally prefer to play against better players, and I think a lot better than my rating reflects, that might just be my ego, but I think I’m a 1750-1800 limited player I just do most of my playing in unsanctioned events. Game 1 This was the single longest game I played all day long. My life total changed 19 times so the game was at least 20 turns long. Andy was playing the most annoying deck I had ever played against. He played a turn 2 Trip Noose, into turn 3 Augury Adept, into turn 4 Silkbind Faerie, and had to spend several turn doing nothing, but making sure that he didn’t get too far ahead with the Adept. I finally go a Silkbind Faerie of my own and then put some pressure on with a Scuzzback Maruader. The Marauder traded with a few dudes and got in some damage on its way out. Then I played a huge Howl of the Night Pack, and followed it up with a Godhead of Awe and thought for sure I was going to pull it out. I had a major creature advantage and all of our dooders were on the same footing. So I began swinging in with enough guys to be threatening, but still keeping enough back to keep him from cracking back and killing me at my very low life total. Then he ripped and slammed a Valley Maker on the table. I wasn’t too worried at first because he didn’t seem to have any mountains, but it turns out that the add GGG to you mana pool is a targeted ability. A few turns of me not being able to find a way to deal with the extra mana and I was dead. I brought in the same cards as before, for the same reasons. Game 2 This game was just an old fashioned race. I started with a Mistmeadow Skulk, and added Tattermunge Duo, and was getting in damage off of the protection ability and the forestwalk. I was pretty far ahead on life when I played a decently sized Howl and cracked in to bring him down to 4. I was at 18 and figured that I’d locked up the game when, and this is something I should’ve learned from, he laid a Runes of the Deus on a R/G dooder and I was suddenly at 5 life. He also had an active Barrenton Medic with no -1/-1 counters on it to keep me from killing him. It was a little disappointing to be so close both games and still not be able to get there. However, the games were a lot of fun and if every game I played was like that it was sure to be an enjoyable day. 1-1, 2-2 Round 3 VS Steve My notes for this round are terrible, but I do remember some things. Like Steve mentioning that he had misbuilt his pool. Which was a little comforting, but sometimes people are talking about maybe one card when they say stuff like that so I didn’t get too excited. Game 1 Started with him attacking me with some R/G dooders and me chump blocking as I built up my lands and then made seven 2/2s with Howl. I have his life total recorded as 10, 6, 4. It was a pretty boring game, but I’ll take it. Game 2 More of the same, though I had expected more because he did side in like 9 cards, he got me all the way down to 2 life then I Howled and followed it with a Godhead. He spent a few turns trying to draw a burn spell to finish me, but didn’t get there. 2-1, 4-2 Round 4 VS a different Steve I really don’t remember anything about these games at all. From what little I have written down he played a few small dudes and turned them sideways game one and I just had bigger and better threats, including Howl and Godhead. In game from what I can tell all I did was play a big Howl and it was good enough. I appologize from not having better notes. 3-1, 6-2 Round 5 VS Ryan These games I remember vividly, because they were close and I got very loose near the end of them. Ryan was also one of the nicest people I played against all day so the match was very fun to play. Game 1 I open with Devoted Druid, into turn 3 Wicker Warcrawler, and have a way to deal with everything he puts in front of it for a long time. I think he probably kept a sub par hand, but this was the only game we played that was easy for either of us. Game 2 I opened on an Elvish Hexhunter and Ryan didn’t play anything until turn 3 when he played a Gloomwidow. This is where my play starts to get loose, on my turn 3 I play a Warcrawler, thanks to a Devoted Druid, but don’t attack with my Hexhunter because I forgot that Gloomwidiows can’t block on the ground. It was only a point, but stuff like that can add up. On his turn he killed my Warcrawler and bashed me. My hand was running out of action because I couldn’t come up with more white sources. I manage to trade with his spider, but he just has more pressure manages to get me. Game 3 This game was very tight and I just punted it away. We both started pretty slow with me making only an Elsewhere Flask and Farhaven Elf in the first 3 turn. All Ryan mustered was a Pili-Pala. On turn 4 I played a Scuzzback Marauder and was able to turn it into some damage and take out some dudes. The board stalled for a while until he played a big dooder of his own, a Scuzzback, but I followed it up with 7 Howl tokens and a Safehold Duo. Over he next couple of turns I attacked him down to 8 with my tokens and he made more dooders while drawing cards with Illuminated Folio. On my last turn I untapped with a Farhaven Elf, Safehold Duo, and 5 tokens with him on 8 life and 3 blockers. I do the math and I can’t kill him with what’s on the table, but I’m sitting on 16 life and feel pretty good about my chances of winning. In my hand I have a Manamorphose and a Presence of Gond, and I know my attack will kill one of his dooders. So I simply send everyone, but the elf and take him down to two. In my second main phase I play Manamorphose and draw . . . Somnomancer . . . Wow what a bone headed play. I play it out and put the presence on my elf. He untaps, puts Runes of the Deus on a Morselholder and Swings in for 21. There was no reason for me to lose that game at all. Any reasonable player would’ve just played the Manamorphose before they attack just to see the top card. And afterwards I counted how many cards in my deck would just have won me the game. I had 5 cards that just won me the game right then and there, and 1 that would’ve kept him from killing me. I felt so terrible, but I was still in the running to make day two. 3-2, 7-4 Round 6 VS Matt I was never really in either of these games. I also have no notes except Kithkin Sheild-Dare FTW scarwled over the top of game one life totals. Matt had seen me beat someone up with Howl of the Night Pack a few rounds earlier and cringed when I played Elsewhere Flask, but other than that I don’t remember much. I was still pretty upset about the last round. 3-3, 7-6 After that I dropped and went to get dinner with my buddies and look for block decks. Which brings me to my favorite story of the whole trip which I’ll cover sometime tomorrow or maybe the day after. Until next time. Bob
Tags: Magic Sealed Limited
Yesterday I posted up my card pool and today I’ll go over my deck, a few other possibilities, and my matches. For those of you who didn’t see the pool yet you can find it HERE, for the rest of you here is the deck I played. 1 Elvish Heexhunter 2 Devoted Druid 1 Somnomancer 1 Mistmeadow Skulk 1 Silkbind Faerie 1 Thistledown Duo 1 Plumeveil 1 Farhaven Elf 1 Scuttlemutt 1 Raven’s Run Dragoon 1 Safehold Duo 1 Scrapbasket 1 Godhead of Awe 1 Scuzzback Marauders 1 Wicker Warcrawler 1 Aether Tow 1 Curse of Chains 1 Manamorphose 1 Tower Above 1 Presence of Gond 1 Howl of the Night Pack 1 Elsewhere Flask 9 Plains 7 Forest 1 Sapseep Forest I chose this build for a few reasons. First off it let me play only 17 lands. The general rule of thumb in sealed is to play 18 lands because the games are slower and you want to be able to cast your big spells. With three mana producing dooders, and another that fetches them I was able to cut it down to 17. For awhile I considered to play only 16, but in the end I didn’t have the courage. Secondly it let me only play two kinds of lands. When you have to win 7-8 rounds on day one making yourself immune to mana screw is good. While I didn’t go the whole day without mana issues I certainly did a lot better than average. I heard a mana screw story almost every round. The only mana problems I ever run into was getting to the fifth white source for a Godhead of Awe, and that only happened a few times. Lastly I really wanted to play Howl of the Night Pack. That card is just bonkers and because of it I think I may have mis-built and played Green when I didn’t really need to. With an Elsewhere Flask I think I can safely play it without having any Forests in my deck. I know that makes the card dead without the Flask, but I only lost one game all day in which I cast this spell and I was too far behind at that point for it to matter. Which leads me into the deck I think is correct for this pool, though I still could be off a little. 1 Oona’s Gatewarden 1 Somnomancer 1 Wasp Lancer 1 Plumeveil 1 Silkbind Faerie 1 Scuttlemutte 1 Corrosive Mentor 1 Faerie Macabre 1 Scrapbasket 1 Wanderbrine Rootcutters 1 Loch Korrigan 1 Godhead of Awe 1 Cultbrand Cinder 1 Isleback Spawn 1 Midnight Banshee 1 Elsewhere Flask 1 Howl of the Night Pack 1 Corrupt 1 Aethertow 1 Torrent of Souls 1 Curse of Chains 1 Consign to Dreams 10 Islands 8 Swamps This deck is very slow, but chock full of bomb cards. Godhead, Banshe, Howl, and can threaten huge life swings with big Corrupts. It also packs a pile of super annoying creatures and some removal to hopefully get you to the late game where your bombs will take over. This deck is a bit more greedy than the other one, but also a good deal more powerful I think. Let me know what you guys think. I was going to write about my games, but I ran out of time tonight so I’ll try and get it to tomorrow. I have the day off work so chances are good that I will have all the time I need. For now I’m just beat and I have to a lot of work to do. Until next time. Bob
Tags: Magic Sealed Limited
Well so much for writing about Standard. I had planed to write more articles like the one I did for Faeries, but I got stupid busy and just sort of ran out of time to do anything. Now that I’m back home and on a more reliable schedule I’ll try to get back to writing a little more often and for starters I have a GP Indy report for you guys. Below is the pool I opened and then proceeded to punt myself to a 3-3 record. Before I go into the games or my deck I figure I’d give you guys a day or so to see what you would build for yourself. I can tell you that after spending more time with my pool I think I may have mis-built it. Tomorrow evening I’ll post up my deck, along with the deck I think I should have built, and go over my matches as well. Until next time. Bob Lands Sapseep Forest Artifacts Chainbreaker Elsewhere Flask Lockjaw Snapper Pili-Pala Rattleblaze Scarecrow Scrapbasket Scuttlemutt Wicker Warcrawler White Apothecary Initiate Goldenglow Moth Last Breath Mistmeadow Skulk Strip Bare White/Blue AEthertow Barrenton Cragtreads Curse of Chains Godhead of Awe Plumeveil Silkbind Faerie Thistledown Duo Turn to Mist Somnomancer Zealous Guardian Blue Cerulean Wisps Consign to Dreams Drowner Initiate Isleback Spawn Kinscaer Harpoonist Blue/Black Fate Transfer Inkfathom Infiltrator Oona’s Gatewarden Scarscale Ritual x2 Wanderbrine Rootcutters Wasp Lancer Black Cinderbones Corrosive Mentor x2 Corrupt Disturbing Plot Faerie Macabre Loch Korrigan Midnight Banshee Polluted Bonds Smolder Initiate Black/Red Cultbrand Cinder Fists of the Demigod Spiteful Visions Torrent of Souls Traitor’s Roar Red Bloodshed Fever Crimson Wisps Ember Gale Mudbrawler Cohort Red/Green Gutteral Response x2 Manamorphose Runes of the Deus Scuzzback Marauders Scuzzback Scrapper Tattermunge Duo Green Devoted Druid x2 Farhaven Elf Foxfire Oak Howl of the Night Pack Tower Above Nurturer Initiate Presence of Gond Roughshod Mentor Toil to Renown Green/ White Elvish Hexhunter Safehold Duo Raven’s Run Dragoon
Tags: Magic Sealed Limited
When deciding on where I would start my more in depth break down standard deck Faeries seemed like the obvious choice. Just about every where you go you’ll find someone rambling on and on about how it’s the best deck hands down and it’s getting hard to argue. Alex Bertoncini just won both the 5k and 2k standard opens with the deck with the Faerie mirror being the final match of both tournaments. So just what makes Faeries such a house? To try and find out I’ve complied several different Faeries lists to try and see what they all have in common. ave the main deck from four fairly different lists. Mine from the blog I wrote a few days ago, the top 2 lists from the 5k open and the list provided by Gerry T. on SCG.com. First the easy part, what do all the decks have in common? 4 Mistbind Clique 4 Scion of Oona 4 Spellstutter Sprite 4 Ancestral Visions 4 Bitterblossom 3 Cryptic Command 4 Rune Snag We’ll leave the mana for later, but right now we have a deck with 27 cards, plus the 25 lands in each deck. That gives us 8 cards to work with. Since only one of the 4 isn’t running 4 Cryptic Commands, I’m going have that be the first of our 8 cards. Next in line I want to include some number of Terrors. Since only my list is excluding the card I’m going to assume that I’m wrong on this one and include it our list, but how many? My gut tells me 4, so I’ll start there and see where it takes us. The final 3 cards are different in all of the remaining lists. Our choices seem to be Pestermite, Sower of Temptation, or Nameless Inversion. All three of the cards do different thing for the deck, but in some ways Sower of Temptation and Nameless Inversion step on each others toes. Sower can act as a pseudo removal spell and can handle more threats, but is obviously vulnerable. Against any deck that is light on removal Sower is probably much better than Nameless Inversion, but since the format is full of removal, especially the board sweeping kind like Firespout it feels like a Sower wouldn’t be very effective against anything that Nameless Inversion wouldn’t be. So that leaves us with Pestermite or Nameless Inversion. At a glance the deck seems to be lacking threats and Pestermite would help on that front. The card is also effectively a Time Walk against the various Big Mana or any kind of real control decks that are running around. On the flip side Firespout is already extremely popular and Pestermite is pretty terrible against a Firespout, and those match-ups are already some of better ones that Faeries has seen. Nameless Inversion also seems very strong against any of the many aggro decks in the format, RDW, Merfolk, B/G, and the like. It also makes the deck more controlling and gives you more chances to try and out play your opponent, which may or may not be a good thing. One final argument for Nameless Inversion is that Brett Blackman put 3 copies of the card into his sideboard, which we’ll get to in a bit, so the card must have some merit. This one is a close call, but for now I think we should go with the Nameless Inversions. With the popularity of Revilark waning and the absence of any other real control decks in the format I don’t think that 7 removal spells will be too many, especially considering how aggro heavy the format is. I could see someone making a case for Pestermite as the card is still really strong, but until a real control deck rears its head I think we should stick with Nameless Inversion. The mana isn’t quite as interesting, but here is what the decks have in common. 2 Faerie Conclave 4 Island 4 Mutavault 1 Pendelhaven 4 River of Tears 4 Secluded Glen 4 Underground River That gives us 23 out of 25 cards. The real questions here are, “How many Pendelhavens do we play?” and “How many Faerie Conclaves do we play?” The answer to our first question is fairly simple in my mind. Pendelhaven is so strong that you really want to play one almost every game. So a second one seems like a must. The next question is a tad more difficult. The real dilemma here is being able to play suspend an Ancestral Visions on turn one. If we only play 2 Faerie Conclave that will give us 13/60 cards capable of playing a turn one Visions. If we play 3 Faerie Conclave we’ll have only 12/60 cards that give us turn one Visions. That’s a difference of less that two percent, which doesn’t seem like a lot. So the real question is “How much more important is a turn one Visions verses a Faerie Conclave?” Since playing a turn one Visions might just be the best play this deck can make I think we can safely assume that making that happen even two percent more often is good. Taking all this into consideration it leaves us with this. 4 Mistbind Clique 4 Scion of Oona 4 Spellstutter Sprite 4 Ancestral Visions 4 Bitterblossom 4 Cryptic Command 3 Nameless Inversion 4 Rune Snag 4 Terror 2 Faerie Conclave 5 Island 4 Mutavault 2 Pendelhaven 4 River of Tears 4 Secluded Glen 4 Underground River As I mentioned before I don’t think there is anything with playing the Pestermites over the Nameless Inversions, but keeping the current meta-game in mind I think Nameless Inversion is probably better right now, but if the control decks make a comeback Pestermite would certainly be the card of choice. Now for the sideboards, since I didn’t post a sideboard with my deck I’ll just leave it out.
So first we’ll take care of the easy stuff. 3 Damnation 4 Thoughtseize That gives use 8 cards to work with and a lot of options. I think we can safely eliminate all the spot removal cards as our main deck is already sporting seven of them, so out goes, Nameless Inversion, Peppersmoke, and Slaughter Pact, leaving us with some combination of Bottle Gnomes, Fledgling Mawcor, and Flashfreeze. Fledgling Mawcor is extremely strong in the mirror, and if the top 8 of the SCG 2k open is any indication the of this decks popularity then we’ll want as many as we can post board. Now we just have to decide between Bottle Gnomes and Flashfreeze. I really like Bottle Gnomes in such an aggro heavy environment. It can soak up a pretty hefty amount of damage and helps you stay alive when you have a Bitterblossom on the table. Flashfreeze may not be able to block and won’t keep you dieing from Bitterblossom, but it can deal with a lot of cards that Bottle Gnomes cannot. Cloudthresher and Firespout come to mind, and we already have Damnation to deal with other creature based strategies. As much as I love casting me some Bottle Gnomes I think we will probably be better off with Flash Freeze. Which brings us to the following. 3 Damnation 4 Flashfreeze 4 Fledgling Mawcor 4 Thoughtseize I’m actually surprised at the level of flexibility that was offered to us in card selection. When I started I pretty much figured I’d be copying and pasting something and while we ended up with a list nearly identical to GerryT’s I think you could easily fit Pestermite into the deck without hurting it at all. This deck is clearly extremely powerful and should be a part of any testing you do. As far as testing goes I’m not going to do that part of the process for you, stop being so lazy. Up next on my list are the B/G decks that have been pretty popular as of late, but if any of you have an archetype that you would like me to explore let me know. Until next time. Bob
Tags: Magic Standard
So I had a little free time on Friday and I decided to go up and play some standard at a new store with a few of my buddies. I had wanted to play Faeries, but I was missing two Ancestral Visions so I decided not to play the deck with out them. So I started digging through my cards to come up with something to play and this little concoction is what resulted. 4 Avalanche Riders 3 Grinning Ingus 4 Murderous Redcap 4 Primal Forcemage 2 Siege-Gang Commander 4 Wall of Roots 4 Harmonize 4 Mwonvuli Acid-Moss 4 Search for Tomorrow 3 Wild Pair 10 Forests 3 Karplusan Forest 7 Mountains 4 Treetop Village Some of you might remember this back from Timespiral Block, but the deck is surprisingly good. Primal Forcemage is a house, and curving out into either a Redcap or an Avalanche Rider is so absolutely back breaking. The can also randomly play turn 3 Siege-Gang Commanders which is pretty good. Then there’s the combo. Even without a Grinning Ingus to do seriously broken things just playing a Forcemage into a Redcap, or even better if you have a Forcemage already in play and play a Redcap into a Redcap the game can swing in your favor really quickly. The mana base is a bit sketchy, but like I said I came up with this deck in the course of like a day and a half and didn’t have time to find anything else, but if anything the only non-basic land this deck probably needs is Treetop Village. You could probably just cut the Karp Forests for Mountains and the deck would be fine, and pretty much blank Fulminator Mages in the process. I don’t really think that adding any non-basic lands to this deck will help it, but if you want to go right ahead. The sideboard I played at the FNM was pretty terrible, but here’s what I think a good sideboard would probably look like. 4 Firespout 4 Riftsweeper 4 Krosan Grip 3 Magus of the Moon/Fulminator Mage/Vexing Susher This sideboard is exclusively to combat Swans combo and Faeries as the deck is rediculously good against other “Big Mana” decks. I’m not really sure about Magus of the Moon or Fulminator mage, but I feel like both cards are good against both Faeries and Swans, but resolving a Vexing Susher against Faeries probably makes the game a lot easier. I like Firespout better than Raking Canopy because it’s more flexible and can be very good against all the various Elf decks. Krosan Grip is better than Ancient Grudge because it will always get Bitterblossom. Playing the deck right means knowing how to use the stack correctly, if you can’t properly manipulate the stack you can make some pretty bonehead plays. If a Forcemage is in play you always want to resolve the Wild Pair trigger first otherwise you won’t be able to fetch anything in you deck. Don’t forget that you can start the combo off with a Wall of Roots by producing a green mana in response to the Wild Pair trigger. Overall the deck is pretty easy to play. Build up your mana, slow down your opponent with the odd land destruction spell or Redcap. Then you win, by doing unfair things. The decks worst match-up is probably Faeries and I haven’t done nearly enough testing to know if this can be changed at all, but if you can come up with some kind of way to make the match up even close to 50/50 I really like this deck against the rest of the meta-game. Like I said the deck is really good against any of the big mana decks and if you draw the hate pretty good against Swans. I guess they can always just have the nuts and you don’t draw one of your 8 spells that stops them, but that’s just how the Swans match up works. I went 2-2 at the FNM with it losing to Swans and in an attempt to spilt the 3rd place prize with my opponent conceding because his tie breakers were a little bit better than mine. I’m pretty sure I would’ve won the match had we had time to play out the last game, but time was called and we negotiated the split instead of drawing and ruining both of our chances at prizes. Not to mentioned his chances of winning the first game was pretty much nothing, but I literally drew all but 4 of the land in my deck, after playing 3 Harmonize, and 6 land fetching spells, and spent about 7 turns looking for any of one of about 6 or 7 spells that would’ve just won me the game. Talk about bad beats. In the end he got 4th and I walked away with nothing. Oh well. This deck is really fun to play and surprisingly good, so I feel like the night was overall a success. Until next time. Bob
Tags: Magic Standard
US Regionals are coming up soon, and it’s got me thinking about Standard. Also the May FNM card is the most badass looking Pendelhaven I’ve ever seen and I wants me one something fierce. So the first thing I like to do before jumping into a new format is wander around the web and compile some information so that I can get an idea of what kind of important information I need to keep in mind while preparing for whatever event I happen to want to play in. This is just such a compilation. Faeries I guess I’ll start with the 800 pound gorilla in the room. I’ve heard this described as the perfect example of an aggro-control deck. Only 3 cards in the deck can’t be used at instant speed, Ancestral Vision, Bitterblossom, and activating a Mutavault. That is out of control. Combine that with a basically perfect mana base and 12 counter spells and it’s pretty easy to see why everyone seems to be winning with this. I had some one tell me it was like Timespiral block teachings, but without the requisite skill needed to play it. Here’s the list I would probably play. 4 Mistbind Clique
4 Pestermite
4 Scion of Oona
3 Sower of Temptation
4 Spellstutter Sprite 4 Ancestral Vision
4 Bitterblossom
4 Cryptic Command
4 Rune Snag 3 Faerie Conclave
4 Island
4 Mutavault
2 Pendelhaven
4 River of Tears
4 Secluded Glen
4 Underground River I think this list is pretty standard of what people are running, but I’ll talk about it a bit anyways. The first thing that might look out of place is the 2nd Pendelhaven, but I have it on pretty high authority that it’s probably the best card in the mirror and that getting yours first is probably the best thing that can happen to you. That said it doesn’t let you play Visions on turn one, which is the very same reason this deck doesn’t Sunken Ruins, and might be better off in the board just for the mirror, but if you do take it just make sure you don’t replace it with something that can’t make you a blue mana on turn one. In fact I’m just going to say it should either be a Pendelhaven or an Island and that’s probably it. As for the sideboard I’m not sure about it right now because well I don’t know what the metagame will look like, but there is one card that I’d like to mention as something I think could possibly be really strong, Faerie Macabre. This card is really exciting to me as it can do its job in any deck, but will always be useful in this particular one. Sadly this deck is probably also the one deck that doesn’t need any help shoring up its combo matches, but the idea of wreaking the other combo decks in the format at instant speed for zero mana is still pretty enticing and something I’m going to look into testing in the near future. Red Deck that may or may not Wins I keep hearing about how Shadowmoor made out of control awesome, but I just don’t see it. I’m not saying that it didn’t get some goodies, by all means I think it did improve a lot, but it’s not all of sudden the bees knees. In fact I can’t seem to track down a definitive list of what should or should not be in the deck. But if I had to guess it would probably look something like this. 4 Tattermunge Maniac 4 Mogg Fanatic 4 Tarmogoyf
4 Keldon Marauders
4 Countryside Crusher
4 Bogart Ram-Gang
4 Flame Javelin
4 Lash-Out
4 Tarfire
4 Fire-Lit Thicket 4 Karplusan Forest
12 Mountain 4 Treetop Village Now this list is probably far from perfect, but it has everything I would want in a R/g deck. I posted my feeling in other blogs about Fulminator Mage and he might be really good in the sideboard, but I just don’t think he’s aggressive enough and not nearly good enough against decks like Faeries to be in the main deck. This build is capable of throwing the most damage at someone with access to 2 power on turn one, and 3 power on turn two and 3 hasty power on turn three. It also has pretty decent mid-game finishing power, in Tarmogoyfs, Treetops, and Flame Javelins, which we can easily play because of the awesome Fire-Lit Thicket, and I just felt that if I ever had to play a Fulminator Mage on turn three I’d be wishing he was just a big dude so I went with the Crusherator instead. Lash Out might also seem odd here, but I was talking with some friends recently about how often we just use Incinerate to clear the way for dudes and a few days after that I read GerryT’s article on Star City and he brought up that same point. So I switched to Lash Out and I haven’t looked back. If you burn your opponent’s face then play a Flame Javelin. The board is still a little wishy-washy, but it defiantly starts with 4 Vexing Sushers, and 4 Firespout. After that I really have no idea. Revilark Now I’m going to be 100% honest and say I have little no experience with this deck and every where you look people are saying different things about it, but I think the general consensus is that it’s not very good any more. I think the major reason was that it has a terrible time against Faeries, who doesn’t, and that U/W Fish decks were also beating up on it. As a result it seems to have fallen out of favor for some. I’m going to put a list up here, just a straight up Copy/Paste job of Kenji’s deck from the GP. 3 Aven Riftwatcher
2 Body Double
1 Mirror Entity
4 Mulldrifter
4 Reveillark
4 Riftwing Cloudskate
2 Sower Of Temptation 1 Venser, Shaper Savant 2 Careful Consideration 4 Mind Stone
2 Momentary Blink
4 Rune Snag 3 Wrath Of God 4 Adarkar Wastes
8 Island 2 Mutavault
4 Nimbus Maze
6 Plains Obviously this deck is a little behind the times, but it’s a good starting point. The first obvious upgrade is the uw hybrid land. After that I have no idea what this deck gets, or really any desire to find out to be honest. UW Fish For awhile this deck seemed to be the deck to beat. It could just beat up on Faeries and Revilark without any problem and Dragon Claw made the Red Decks basically a joke. I understand that this had also changed. GerryT himself, master mind behind this list, said so himself. Dragon Claw just isn’t good anymore because Red decks are doing their damage with creatures now and you’re not really making all that much progress. Teferi’s Moat helps, but really you don’t want the red deck match up coming down to one card. Combine that with the recent decline in popularity of Revilark and you can see why this deck has lost a lot of its umpf. That said if the things change at all it could become very strong again so here’s a list for you to keep in mind if the meta-game should take a twist in its favor. 4 Lord Of Atlantis
4 Merrow Reejerey
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Sower Of Temptation
4 Stonybrook Banneret 4 Ancestral Vision 4 Cryptic Command
4 Ponder
2 Remove Soul
3 Sage's Dousing 4 Adarkar Wastes 11 Island
4 Mutavault
4 Wanderwine Hub Not much else to say about this one really. I will say that I like this version better than the one with Sygg in it. Also for those of you who are wondering this deck has white cards in its sideboard. Swan Song Combo I haven’t played this deck before, but people say it’s pretty good. People like Pat Chapin. So it’s probably pretty good then. At the very least everyone should proxy it up and put it into their gaunlet. Here’s Pats most recent list.
2 Dread
4 Swans Of Bryn Argoll
1 Vexing Shusher
4 Beseech The Queen
4 Lotus Bloom
4 Manamorphose
1 Mishra's Bauble
4 Ponder
4 Seismic Assault
4 Telling Time 4 Dakmor Salvage
4 Graven Cairns
2 Reflecting Pool
4 River Of Tears
4 Shivan Reef
2 Sulfurous Springs
2 Sunken Ruins
2 Tolaria West
4 Underground River For those of you who don’t know how the combo works you play Seismic Assualt, toss damage at Swans until you get 2 Dakmor Salvages and then kill your opponent. I’m told you can do this as early as turn four, but again I’ve never played with it so I haven’t a clue. I think that covers what most people are considering the top tier of decks right now. If I get some free time soon I’ll go over some of the more under the radar decks out there and if I get a lot of free time I might even do some testing with something and write something really useful. Until next time. Bob
Tags: Magic Standard Looks That Are Quick
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