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It has taken me decidedly longer to write this article, mostly because I was wondering if it was even relevant to take on Lorwyn Block Constructed in the face of Faeries and Kithkin. And then I realized I could mash together two article ideas I had kicking around in my head, and unleash the monstrosity into the unsuspecting Magic community. While I doubt that its effects will be felt far and/or wide, I'm hoping to at least get this particular decklist out there.

But first off is Article Idea One: Faeries.

It goes without saying at this point that Faeries is the big cheese in block constructed these days. I regard it as a deck to be feared and respected, but I still contend that it is not at Affinity level. The deck is still vulnerable, usually to aggro, but it can be beaten. Not by particular decks, though. I don't think so, anyway. By players. By players that refuse to give in. By players realizing that in a Faeries-heavy metagame, non-Faerie decks actually have the advantage of not being in the mirror-match half the day (or more). By players realizing that if you don't bring Faeries, Faeries goes away.

People are so caught up in the fact that Faeries is everywhere that they fail to think. “But, it's everywhere. It has to be the best deck, right?” No. It's a good deck. I don't think a single deck out of the major players is the best deck, they're all good decks. Faeries is just the one people bring the most, and naturally lends itself to a zillion top 8s and only a few less wins.

But look what happened at Pro Tour-Hollywood. People refused to play Faeries, and only one made it to the top 8. Sure, the percentage of the field that it made up was still large, about 28%, but if you swapped out one Elves deck in the top 8 for Faeries, you have pretty much the same representation from the field at large. And that's why most of the time, metagame theorists and writers will tell you that in a large tournament, the top 8 is usually indicative of the field at large. If one day everyone showed up to your block tournament with B/R Goblins, then all of a sudden Goblins would be the deck to beat.

At this point I'm sure someone out there is saying, “Yeah but Goblins dies to Faeries, idiot.” Really? All the time? (Well, probably, but this is simply an illustrative point. Substitute any deck for Goblins and I'd be making the same point.) Play better Magic. Challenge the Faeries players. Don't just give them a win by not testing against it. And, I guess, this goes for the Faeries players, too. Don't just assume you're going to win because you're playing Faeries. Because it's not Affinity.

With all that said, I'd like to offer up that block right now isn't skewed. It's lazy. No one is doing their homework right now. Patrick Chapin says this week that the other decks out there aren't as efficient with their linear strategies (Rogues, Treefolk, etc.) as Faeries and Kithkin. I think there are viable strategies out there without being tribal, or even necessarily linear. It's just that no one has come across them yet. Keep testing, instead of continually showing up with the same ol' every tournament. Challenge the boundaries. Think for yourself. Question authority.

Sorry, on a bit of a tangent there.

Anyway, if you're going to netdeck (which is not something I outright Condemn; I've done it more than a few times, too) be smart about it. Test the HELL out of it, don't just pick it up, play it against your buddy who's been playing Faeries for three months, and assume it's crap just because it can't beat an experienced Faeries player in the first five matches you ever play against it. Sure, there will be some duds, but maybe you'll find that deck that actually does what you want it to, is intuitive and resilient, and forgiving. (Incidentally, I think that's why Faeries is a good deck… it does and is those things. But there are other decks out there if you don't want to play it. If there is the one takeaway from this entire article, that is it. If you don't like it, play something else.)

And with the Faeries rant out of the way, on to Article Idea Two: Treefolk.

I realize I just spent something like seven hundred words complaining about people complaining about Faeries and then sort of told you to play them anyway. It's some sort of weird logic paradox that comes about when you write spontaneously. The other one is this: sometimes, on the whole, everything makes sense. Which is why I present you with

Treefolk
Lorwyn Block Constructed
by Rick Cummings

4 Murmuring Bosk
2 Vivid Grove
1 Vivid Meadow
2 Vivid Marsh
3 Swamp
6 Forest
3 Plains
3 Reflecting Pool

4 Leaf-Crowned Elder
4 Doran, the Siege Tower
4 Chameleon Colossus
4 Bosk Banneret
4 Treefolk Harbinger
4 Timber Protector
2 Dauntless Dourbark

4 Nameless Inversion
3 Turn to Mist
3 Oblivion Ring

SB: 3 Festercreep
SB: 3 Firespout
SB: 3 Cloudthresher
SB: 2 Faerie Macabre
SB: 2 Primal Command
SB: 2 Shriekmaw

Now, when I say that Pat Chapin is wrong about other linear strategies being inefficient, this is what I mean. Turn one Harbinger fetching up Colossus, turn two Banneret, turn three Colossus is a pretty tough play to beat for most decks. Especially black decks. The deck also plays turn three Leaf-Crowned Elder, turn three Doran, or turn four Timber Protector quite often. Plus there's the added bonus of Leaf-Crowned Elder shenanigans, which cheats so much stuff into play it's unbelievable. There have been multiple games where I've stuck a Harbinger, a Doran, and an Elder, kinshipped out a Nameless, killed their blocker, and swung for the win. Or had an Elder, a Protector, and kinshipped a Protector. Or any number of other silly plays.

The upside to Treefolk is that they can be really fast. Like Kithkin fast. A Harbinger, Banneret, Doran draw is pretty fast, and usually lethal, unless your opponent can deal with you on the spot.

The downside is that Treefolk can be really slow. Like, really slow. The removal package is good for other midrange-y decks, but against Kithkin it's too slow and running giant dudes is a Mirrorweave Liability. The advantage that we have against Faeries is that most of the business dudes are costed so high that they can effectively shut down their Spellstutter Sprites. I have yet to play against Quick ‘n' Toast, but I expect their main spells to deal with Treefolk are Cryptic Command and… Mulldrifter? I don't really know. I'll be honest and say I don't really know how to operate Q'n'T, so I can't reliably say how to play against it.

However, I'm trying to get this deck out to the community because I think it's a deck with a huge amount of potential. I don't know if the numbers are right, and I don't know if I have the deck figured out exactly, nor do I know if the sideboard is correct.

Will this deck win you your PTQ? I don't know. Will it win GP: Denver? I don't know. But at least it's out there. Give it a shot. I love playing the deck and it seems to suit my playstyle well (which isn't surprising; I built the thing, after all). And I don't think I'm the only person that finds a Faeries/Kithkin metagame to be horribly boring.

Rick

P.S. If you haven't read it, I suggest you check out Patrick Chapin's article on Information Cascades in Magic. I think by this point it should be out of Premium range, as it's over a year old now, but I think it should be required reading for anyone playing tournament Magic.

So today we've got some results! Well, okay, 4-4 results. So we'll go for the list first, and a round-by-round breakdown of this year's Minneapolis Regionals.

To begin with, I'll start with the decklist. If you read my last post/blog/article thing, you'll notice I was going to go with either R/G Aggro or R/B Goblins. I chose the Goblins list that Gabriel Nassif and some others were running at Pro Tour: Hollywood. I started with that list, ran it through a couple of permutations before setting on a whopping two-card difference: minus one Siege-Gang Commander, plus one Greater Gargadon. I left the sideboard unchanged because, frankly, I assumed they knew what they were doing when they built the thing, and I didn’t have enough time to exactly test a better board than the one that was built. In the end: this is what it looked like:

4 Auntie's Hovel
3 Graven Cairns
2 Keldon Megaliths
5 Mountain
1 Pendelhaven
3 Sulfurous Springs
7 Swamp
25 lands

4 Greater Gargadon
4 Knucklebone Witch
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Marsh Flitter
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Mogg War Marshal
4 Mudbutton Torchrunner
4 Shadow Guildmage
3 Siege-Gang Commander
35 creatures

Sideboard
3 Earwig Squad
4 Grave Pact
2 Loxodon Warhammer
2 Murderous Redcap
4 Thoughtseize
15 sideboard cards

For those that have never played the deck, or against it, the way it works like this: You make a bunch of dudes. You swing with those dudes. Often, you can sacrifice those dudes to some other dude, be it Marsh Flitter, Siege-Gang Commander, or Greater Gargadon. In some bizarro way, you synergistically wipe out their team and kill them. How that happens, I'm not exactly sure, as this build doesn't run Grave Pact in the main board (which was, in fact, the reason I picked up this list—maindeck Grave Pact just doesn't do it for me), but I assure you that, if you're reasonable compentent at Magic, you can see the goofy interactions that the deck is capable of.

**An aside. I am actually terrible at Magic. For two main reasons. First, I went to an awesome 4-4 finish. While I probably ended up a little ahead in rating, I lost points and about $120 on the trip from Fargo to Minneapolis. Second, for the SECOND COMPETATIVE REL TOURNAMENT IN A ROW I got a game loss for illegal decklist for not remembering to write down cards. ALWAYS TRIPLE-CHECK YOUR DECKLIST. Don't be a moron; don't be me. End aside.**

So to illustrate a couple those interactions, I'll give the quick rundown. Realize that this is built off of rather incomplete notes; the idea of actually writing this blog/post/article came after I was actually sitting down to play the tournament. As such, I may make some errors on exact plays or whatever. Also realize that this is how I saw the games playout. If there’s any inconsistency here, and you know it, please correct me.

Round One (Geoffery with Lark Combo)

Game one I resolve Magus of the Moon, and essentially shut off his mana for the game. Simple enough. Game two he comboed out after two early-game Rune Snags. Those allowed him stabalize, and allow for my first giant blunder of the tournament (not including not writing down a Pendelhaven on my decklist). He has a Murderous Redcap on the board, a Body Double copying Mulldrifter, and a suspended Gargadon, and I'm a genius and swing in with a Marsh Flitter. He blocks with the Double/Mulldrifter, and I pump the Flitter with Pendelhaven, killing the Double. At that point I realize what I did, next turn he untaps, plays Lark, and I die to the combo. Game three he mulligans to six, and then gets stuck on two land. I attempt two Maguses (Magi?), but they're both met by Rune Snags, but the whole thing was moot because of the mana screw.

1-0

Round Two (Nick with Elves)

I don't really remember much from this round, other than I got my game loss this round, won game two with a Magus of the Moon, then lost game three.

1-1

Round Three (Jon with RDW)

Game one I lost the damage race due to the fact that my Guildmages (get this) hit me, too. Game two he gets triple Dragon's Claw and despite the fact that I get an active, swinging Gargadon, I can’t outrace his burn, nor can I make a dent in his lifegain.

1-2

Round Four (Michael with UW Draw-Go)

There was a lot of back-and-forth in these games that got lost in the shuffle of my memory, but I sided in Thoughtseize so I knew to play around Cryptic Command. In the end, though, the combined threat of being denied mana with Magus of the Moon is enough to let youre other, actual threats through against a very slow deck. I won this match in two games.

2-2

Round Five (Adam with Red Deck Wins)

This was my punt round. Game one he took me down to five, without me doing a single damage to him. Finally, his last Keldon Marauders vanished and he had no blockers. I had two Guildmages on the board and two suspended Gargadons. I hit him for two from the ‘mages (taking me to 3), sac'd a ton of stuff, brought in both Gargadons for 18 damage… 20 total, exactly. But it came down to hoping he didn’t have burn, in which case I was dead anyway. So I punted and won. Game two I was one turn away from having enough mana and dudes to sac to and play a Gargadon and attach a Warhammer, swinging for 12 lifelink damage… but he burned me out. Game three he mulled to six, and I punted, sac'd my board to Gargadon to win the damage race early… which I did.

3-2

Round Six (Jason with Mono Red Shamans)

At first, I thought this was just some sort of RDW build, until the Rage Forger came out and the counter shenanigans started. I won game one on the back of a Gargadon, and game two had some tricky Mutavault tricks on his part… and then he tapped out to go all-in and send the team, taking me to seven, after I blocked and sac’d to my Gargadon. Next turn, when he was at nine, I dropped a land, floated three mana, sac’d for the remaining Gargodon counters, got said Garg, attached the Warhammer on the board, and then swung for 12 lifelinked. He said after that game that he didn’t see the play at all, then showed me his hand: Dead//Gone. Had he not tapped out, I would have been down a ton of permanents, short one Gargadon, and dead on the board. Punt!

4-2

Round Seven (Simon with Faeries)

Simon played Ponder, which I love in that deck. Game one I was an idiot and attacked with my Magus of the Moon into a Bitterblossom token with a Scion on the board. I still eventually won the game, but that was pretty stupid. Game two I got a fast draw and he didn’t. But it wasn’t fast enough and I whittled him down to two but couldn’t finish him off. He had a nice play of Mistbinding me in my draw step, locking me out of a hellbent Megaliths activation… and keeping him alive for one more turn. Which is how he killed me. Game three he got a Razormane Masticore which slowly picked off my army. I thought I had it killed, but I forgot Masticore has first strike. Of course, I sac'd half my board to attempt to kill it… which pretty well lost me the game. I still had an out when I was facing down two Scions and and his Masticore… I topdecked a Thoughtseize and he had one card; I could have Seized his card to kill his Masticore on the upkeep, but I figured I was dead anyway. I was at 10, I had two turns at most, and an empty board... so I scooped.

4-3

Round Eight (Chad with Dragonstorm)

I knew from turn two's Molten Slagheap and suspended Lotus Bloom I didn’t have long for this game. I had him down to four on turn four… and then he Dragonstormed for four. Game two saw double suspended Lotus Bloom. I was in race mode again. Turn three I got Incinerated down to 17, turn four I got Rift Bolted to 14, a Bogarden Hellkite hardcast to 9, then turn five I was burned out. Why doesn't that deck work for me when I play it?

Overall: 4-4

Conclusions: This is a conclusion that pretty much anyone that plays competitive Magic right now realizes: a resolved Magus of the Moon is almost enough for you to win the game by itself. Faeries, BG Elves, Quick 'n' Toast, and Merfolk all have a ton of lands that they’re very reliant upon. An unanswered Magus usually Just Wins unless they have an answer in hand.

I like the Nassif (or whomever) build, but I will likely morph the deck into something more akin to the list I’ve posted earlier in an early blog/post/article. I think my list was too scattershot, where this list is too focused on playing your dudes out unimpeded. I'll probably slip some Boggart Shenanigans into the list at a later point. As it is now, I'll probably end up building a Gro list for Standard play at FNM and then working on a Goblins list for Block Constructed. The next PTQ we can hit is only two and a half months away… time to get crackin'!

P.S. DON'T BE ME. DON'T GET GAME LOSSES BECAUSE YOU ARE STUPID AND CAN'T FILL OUT A DECKLIST.

Two decks this week and some commentary! Fun! Dig in, eh?

As promised, the decklist featuring an under-used blue enchantment! That enchantment? Unstable Mutation, of course!

U/B Rogues

11 Swamp
5 Island
2 River of Tears
2 Underground River
1 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

4 Oona’s Prowler
4 Stinkdrinker Bandit
4 Prickly Boggart
4 Inkfathom Infiltrator
4 Looter il-Kor
4 Frogtosser Banneret

4 Psionic Blast
4 Morsel Theft
4 Unstable Mutation
3 Thieves’ Fortune

Sideboard:
4 Extirpate
3 Sudden Death
3 Earwig Squad
3 Terror
2 Rain of Tears

Obviously, there are some differences to be looked at between this and mono-black Rogues.

First, there’s the question of “why not just play mono-black Rogues? They have Oona’s Blackguards and discard up the yin-yang!” That’s true, but there’s only one way that MBR will win, and that’s through the red zone. Sure, you’ll rip your opponent’s hand apart if your Blackguards live, but you really have no extension. You have to go all in if you’re playing MBR, and you pray they don’t have Firespout or Damnation or what have you. With U/B Rogues you have extension in the form of Psionic Blast and Morsel Theft.

Second, there’s the card advantage issue. While most of the U/B answers are one-for-ones, there’s a significantly higher incidence of card draw in the U/B build. If you get prowl on, you get Lightning Helix-plus-card-draw for one black mana (if you have a Banneret out, too), albeit at sorcery speed. Thieves’ Fortune basically says “Impulse on my turn for one blue”. Looter il-Kor lets you see and filter through a ton of cards. If you’re attacking, which you should be anyway in an aggro deck, you get raw card advantage over most decks just for playing the game.

Third, and probably most importantly, you get a better selection of evasive creatures. Unblockable and shadow are vastly superior to flying. And the inability to block is moot, because most of the decks that you’d want to be blocking dudes against are the ones you’ll probably be losing anyway (i.e., anything with Chameleon Colossus, etc.) And with the sheer number of black creatures, it’s unlikely that their Terrors and Slaughter Pacts will be doing much against you.

There are also a couple of sticking points I feel I should mention. First, there is no Bitterblossom in this list. Why? Because the 2cc slot is already full up. Prowlers, Infiltrators, Morsel Theft, Looter il-Kor, Frogtosser Banneret and Stinkdrinker Bandit all want to come out on two mana. The advantages gained by Bitterblossom in this instance are minimal. Second, Unstable Mutation? Really? Really! Think about it this way. (Ignore the two-for-one possibility for a second.) A single Unstable Mutation on an Inkfathom Infiltrator hits for five, four, three, two, and one damage. That’s 15 damage for three mana. If it lives. With two Mutations you hit for eight, six, four, and two. That’s 18 damage. Usually you don’t even have to connect that many times, either, because by the point you can cast your direct damage, they’re already in burn range.

The best part about this deck is its flexibility. It can be an all-out assault, firing on all cylinders, or it can be a more marginal, almost tempo-based deck, massaging out small advantages, slow-rolling through mass removal and evading their weenies while neutralizing threats with Psionic Blast. And being in two of the best colors in Standard means that you have the ability to sideboard for almost any situation. You can reliably side for R/G Aggro, Elves, and, to an extent, Faeries. While my build is built to exploit the prowl mechanic, you can take out the Frogtossers and some of the support spells to make it faster or slower.

Having said that, there are some issues that I’m trying to work out of the deck right now. The manabase needs help. A lot of it is due to the fact that I simply don’t have the lands available to me. Otherwise there’d be more in the way of duals. The other problem with the mana is that the deck plays significantly differently if prowl is NOT an option. With prowl, the curve tops out and three for Psi Blast. There are many games I’ve won with just three or four land. Likewise, there are many I’ve lost with just as many land. I’m thinking about bumping the land up to 22 and cutting and Oona’s Prowler. Which leads me to my second point.

Oona’s Prowler, I’m pretty sure, does not fit into this deck as well as I had hoped. At least as often as I’m hitting for three damage with it, I’m hitting for one or less, or being chumped by Bitterblossom tokens. I have yet to decide what to put in its slot, though. I’ve considered Dauthi Slayer, but without the Rogue creature type, the card may be a less perfect solution to a difficult question.

The sideboard, I’m sure, needs help. I’m not sure why I put Rain of Tears in there aside from hitting manlands and storage lands. But with the rise of Quick ‘n’ Toast, maybe an LD package is what we need? I don’t know. In that case I’d like Fulminator Mages, but they are currently inaccessible in my area and I’m not made of money to buy some with.

For my second list I’d like to offer up my R/G Aggro deck that I may be playing at Regionals.

R/G Aggro

2 Treetop Village
4 Karplusan Forest
8 Mountain
7 Forest

2 Cloudthresher
4 Magus of the Moon
4 Troll Ascetic
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Birds of Paradise

3 Stonewood Invocation
3 Call of the Herd
4 Flame Javelin
4 Incinerate
3 Sulfurous Blast

Sideboard
1 Cloudthresher
1 Chameleon Colossus
2 Firespout
2 Loxodon Warhammer
4 Riftsweeper
3 Kitchen Finks
1 Shivan Dragon
1 Stonewood Invocation

The list is spawned out of my playtest partner’s R/G “I friggin hate faeries” list. While I’m trying to achieve a similar win record against Faeries, I’m trying to be able to win against other stuff, too. Magus hits so many decks right now. Except RDW, of course. Troll Ascetic is one of the best creatures in green, and is criminally underplayed, in my opinion. Call of the Herd is a counter magnet.

The sideboard is heavily influenced by the Zvi Mowshowitz (et al.) deck from PT: Hollywood. The only thing that I have an issue with right now is the singleton Shivan Dragon. Without the Primal Command from Zvi’s build, I wonder how effective it will be just hoping to naturally draw into it. I may add some. But it also doesn’t have the extensive manabase, opting instead for a lower curve, topped out with two Cloudthreshers.

In testing, though, it seems to annihilate Faeries (at least, when piloted by my friends) and gives most midrange strategies a run for their money. But I haven’t tested it against Lark Combo, so I don’t know what will happen there. Teferi’s Moat set to green is probably game over right now. I’m also unsure of the Elves matchup. It seems pretty 50-50 right now, or maybe 40-60 in Elves favor. So, in all honesty, I’m still not sold on the deck.

My other option for Regionals is the Goblins deck that Gabriel Nassif played at PT: Hollywood. It’s basically R/B Tokens, but with some other bits of flair. I have a history with Goblins, as a look at the other posts on this block will tell you, so I feel like I could probably pick it up and play it with very little practice. I may make a couple changes to that list if I do play it, but Shadow Guildmage seems like a weenie beater right now. And Regionals is pretty aggro-centric, if I remember right, so we’ll see.

My commentary this week is about one thing: the announcement of the Mythic rarity. I’m not going into the numbers crunch of it, because it’s been dealt with before, but I am going to side with Dave Meeson at Star City Games. I think it’s simply a way to get tournament players to buy more packs instead of relying on the secondary market, which, personally, I think is getting out of hand. I’ve been resisting this trend for a while, but with Future Sight, Lorwyn, Morningtide, and now Shadowmoor producing $20+ dollar staples, I’m getting to the point that I simply can’t afford to play the game competitively, and that’s, honestly, about the only thing keeping my buying packs right now.

I think WotC has been taking many a cue from Upper Deck’s World of Warcraft TCG of late, though. Planeswalkers and wither are both mechanics that I think are taken from WoW’s hero cards and damage system and then given the Magic spin. But I think both Timeshifted and Mythic rarities are stealing from the WoW rarity and Magi-fied, right down to the rarity color-coding.

In WoW, you have five levels of rarity: common, uncommon, rare, epic, and legendary. The color-coding for those, respectively, are: white, green, blue, purple, and orange. Seeing a similarity yet? Now, I’m not saying that Magic is trying to become World of Warcraft, but I think WotC has realized that some of its player base is moving to a different game (some of their higher-caliber players have even worked on design for the game) and are trying to bridge the difference gap. One of the biggest selling points for WoW, though, is the franchise. The name. The rarity of the Legendary Loot cards and the drive to buy packs isn’t from the cards themselves being inherently powerful, but because the Loot card gives you an item in the WoW online game. I think that’s something that Wizards isn’t seeing.

I’m not trying to sound cynical here, nor do I think that Magic is dying and hemorrhaging players, but as a casual player of WoW (both the MMORPG and the TCG), I can’t help but see the similarities, and I don’t think that the changes to Magic will bring in new players. In fact, I think a large factor in keeping players OUT of the game is the cost. When I tell people that my Magic collection is the single most expensive investment in my apartment, they get a very worried look on their face. For me, ultimately, I’m spending money to have fun. But let’s face it: if the prices (both primary and secondary, especially when Mythic is thrown into the mix) keep going up, I’m going to have to look for somewhere else to spend my entertainment dollar.

I don’t think the game is dying. But my interest in it may be flagging, at least in the “I’m driving a ton of sales in order to stay competitive” sense. And I don’t think I’m the only one.

First, the deck:

 

    4 Graven Cairns

    4 Sulfurous Springs

    6 Swamp

    8 Mountain

 

    4 Demigod of Revenge

    4 Reckless Wurm

    4 Oona's Prowler

    4 Gathan Raiders

    4 Nightshade Assassin

    2 Jaya Ballard, Task Mage

    2 Tombstalker

 

    4 Fiery Temper

    4 Lightning Axe

    3 Dark Withering

    3 Flame Javelin

 

Notes: This is NOT the next mad Faerie-killer. I haven't tested against it, and I don't know how it will fare. So far in testing it plays sort of midrange in strategy. It's not super-fast, but it tends to get a lot of dumb plays (EOT Reckless Wurm, etc) and discarding Demigod only to have it come back next turn with a friend is pretty fun. Burning something with Lightning Axe (something big, like Goyf) and hitting another creature or the dome for 3 with Fiery Temper is pretty fun.

 

Jaya Ballard hits incidental blue permanents, Incinerates to the face, or does all sorts of other stuff. If she lives. Sometimes she doesn't.

 

I have no sideboard. It may contain more burn, and probably will have Extirpates. It would have Thoughtseize if I had any.

 

As a second thought in this very, very short post, please, please, PLEASE SHUT UP ABOUT FAERIES. Either post a list that kills it or stop bitching about it! We know!

 

Next week:

 

UB Rogues. Without Bitterblossom. And WITH one unconventional, underplayed blue enchantment. Seriously.

Well hello, Cyberweb! It’s been a while, no? School will do that. I’ve been quite busy with my various things (mostly school and work), so I’ve not been able to do much in the world of the Magical cards, but today I shall post the deck I’ve been playing at FNM lately. So without further ado, I present RB Combo Gobbo!

4 Greater Gargadon
4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Knucklebone Witch
4 Frogtosser Banneret
4 Squeaking Pie Sneak
4 Mogg War Marshal
4 Mudbutton Torchrunner
4 Marsh Flitter
3 Siege-Gang Commander

4 Boggart Shenanigans

4 Auntie’s Hovel
4 Sulfurous Springs
2 Graven Cairns
1 Pendelhaven
7 Mountain
3 Swamp

SB:
3 Wort, Boggart Auntie
3 Fodder Launch
3 Mad Auntie
1 Thoughseize
4 Extirpate
1 Pyroclasm

This is based on a deck from someone like Sam Stein or some such. Sam Black, maybe. Sam Someone. Anyway, the original deck ran Mad Aunties mainboard, as well as two Wort. It focused solely on powering out a ton of token producing dudes and swarming the opponent out with them. While I liked this idea, I thought that Shenanigans is really what makes the deck tick. The original list also ran zero Gargadons.

So I added in the Gargadons, and between them and the Marsh Flitters, you have a pretty decent supply of sac outlets. So then the goal is to attack in the early turns, amass a ton of dudes with a Shenanigans or two in play, then sac the board to Gargs or Flitters. Usually, this is a very fast win, say turn 4 or 5. (No, really.) Of course, this is with optimal conditions, e.g., not having an opponent across from you. In the real world, things are different.

The deck, naturally, has issues with early board sweepers like Pyroclasm, or with very large, cheap dudes (read: Tarmogoyf). And unless it wins quickly, it often gets out-tempo’d by Faeries.

So that means we have issues with RG Big Mana, UB Faeries, other Goblin decks that run lords, and any deck with green. Oh, and lifegain. So… it doesn’t really work against any deck in the local metagame, nor the global, it seems. So why would I advocate playing Combo Gobbo? Because I think it has the most raw power in the format. Unless your opponent screws with you in a major way (mostly countering things like Shenanigans), you have a pretty good chance to win game one, and with the recursion of Wort and Fodder Launch in games two and three, you can usually hold things at bay long enough to Get There. If you’re good at Magic. Which I am not. I have run the deck to a number of varying FNM records, 3-1, 2-2, and 1-3, but have never gone 4-0 or 0-4 with it. And it’s a blast to play.

Some side notes on the deck:

1. I don’t think that my sideboard is right, and if it is, I’m certainly not using it properly. I think a lot of the losses I have with it come from the inability to sideboard correctly. I actually got to the point at the last FNM I played it in that I decided to flat-out stop sideboarding, just to see what happened, and I seemed to at least be more consistent in game two. So maybe the main sixty is just that good. I don’t know.

2. Greater Gargadon is the best psychological mindfunk in Standard. You suspend it, and every aggro player (and most control players) shift all their attention to neutralizing it. With that plan you can usually sneak through damage from smaller creatures (while sacking any of the dudes they kill off to the Gargs), manage to resolve things you shouldn’t (like S-GC), and generally mess with your opponent’s head.

3. The deck is relatively similar to Affinity. No, really. I mean this in the “attack, sac everything to ______, oops, you’re dead.” I’ve won many games I had no business winning thanks to synergy and math. If Arcbound Ravager is the fairy godmother of Extended, I think Boggart Shenanigans is the fairy godmother of Standard. Of course, this isn’t AS good as Affinity, due to the lands not being of the type “Land – Goblin”, but hey. It’s pretty sick for Standard.

Well, that’s about it for this week. There’s a $200 tournament at my local shop this weekend, and the format is Block Constructed. I will post my decklist soon thereafter, and proclaim its awesomeness, even if I lose badly. Which I might. I AM pretty terrible at Magic, after all.

Sometimes in people’s lives, decisions are made for the betterment of their lives. I made one such decision not too long ago—about a month, actually—and it has been going well until just recently. I’d decided that I would stop drinking caffeine, because it gives me really nasty headaches most of the time. Me? I’m a straight-edge kinda guy most of the time. I rarely drink, I don’t do drugs, none of that. But caffeine was the one chemical I indulged in constantly, and it was beginning to affect my health (heart murmurs, the aforementioned headaches, irritability, etc.), so I quit, cold turkey, and I’ve been staying pretty true to it, barring extenuating circumstances. One such circumstance hit tonight.

 

My testing group got together tonight to evaluate our deck decisions, and after many games of turning cards, shuffling libraries, and coming to the conclusion that Next Level Blue is either the hardest deck in the world to play or Patrick Chapin and Tom LaPille are really good at convincing people that a deck only accomplishes what it tries to do about 35% of the time*, we decided that we needed some food. We ordered a couple pizzas, and apparently our local Domino’s no longer carries Sierra Mist, so we were forced to get Mountain Dew. Dew is the bane of caffeine-abstainers everywhere, as it’s mightily delicious. Anyway, I drank some. I drank a lot.

 

And now I’m writing about Magic at quarter to four in the morning. With no real intention of sleeping any time soon. So I guess I’ll just jump into it.

 

Our playgroup (I refuse to call us a “team”) assembled our various decks—Rock, Affinity, Dredge, and TEPS—and then proxied up some other gauntlet decks: Next Level Blue, Ideal, and the newer Goblins build (Earwig Squad!), and started running matchups.

 

The first conclusion we came to is that the EXACT TEPS lists from last year are still viable. Sure, everyone knows that now, thanks to GP: Vancouver, but actually playing it against the field is quite remarkable. The next is that Rock, in probably any concoction, is pretty good still. Again, obvious when looking at Vancouver lists. But this particular build of Rock has creature-kill coming out the hind end, and can side in a particularly devastating control/discard package. Affinity is what it is. I don’t know what version is necessarily best, but I feel the Frenzy/Atog build is much more explosive and therefore more powerful. It’s just a pity that the combo decks are still a turn too fast.

 

This leaves us with the only other fully-built maindeck: Dredge.

 

Dredge, she is a fickle mistress. It may have an 80% game-one percentage, but games two and three are absolute murder, and with the amount of Tribe-Elders and Mogg Fanatics in the Internets in the past week, game one doesn’t look so hot anymore. Add to that the fact that I’m running a 15-land build, and I got frustrated a lot tonight. Even aggressive mulligan strategies just weren’t pulling the deck as well as it used to perform.

 

So I’m changing. Again. I’m playing UG Tron.

 

What’s that you say? Everyone and their brother is playing UG Tron? Well that’s good for them. Here’s why I’M going to play it.

 

First, UG Tron (like its older brother UW Tron) pack Gifts and Tron into the same deck. I loved the concept of the deck for as long as I can remember. Gifts for Tron. Gifts for counters. Gifts for Slaver-Lock. Gifts to to thin. It’s a great deck, it really is, and I think the Hill/Lundquist build is interesting and fun looking, not to mention it’s got some pedigree. (Side note: Moment’s Peace was spotted by me just a month or two ago in a Fog deck played by one of our local players. As well as Rude Awakening. So that tech isn’t that new.)

 

So that’s my project for tomorrow later today. Build UG Tron. Slam it against some other decks. We built Domain Zoo at the end of the night, we’ll likely play a bunch too. But this will be my last deck switch, I’m pretty sure, before I end up sitting in the poorhouse from buying a zillion cards I won’t need past October.

 

So  that’s today’s agenda.

 

With that out of the way, I’d like to say something about Exteneded’s new rotation policy. I can understand the reasoning behind it, but I was really looking forward to those damn lands going away in Onslaught. I was looking forward to the death of almost all the potent decks in the format. Dredge, TEPS, Gaea’s Might, etc. I was looking forward to Rav/TSP Standard decks again (Dragonstorm, anyone?), but it looks like we’re going to get another year of non-Engineered Plague-able Goblins decks. Yay. And the continued necessity to get the million-dollar manabases. I don’t hate the new policy, but I’m not in love with it either.

 

Anyway, that’s about all I can muster. Seems I’m finally crashing now, so I better go before I pass out on the keyboard and all you see is //////////////////////////////////////fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff fffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff fff. I don’t think you’d like that. Next weekish I will be talking about our COMMONS CUBE. Yay!

 

*Or maybe I’m just bad at Magic. We’ll figure it out one day.

Well, this installment of SIF is a lie. It’s a lie because I said last time that I’d be talking about Dredge, even with a list. Well, I lied. While I fully intend to be playing The Most Powerful Deck in Extended at next month’s PTQ, I don’t have the exact list in front of me. But I can give you a quick synopsis of it.

It’s a hybrid of the many builds out there right now, running both Putrid Imp and Tireless Tribe, no Tolarian Winds, and 14 land. And one Wonder. The sideboard has the usual anti-hate package, with one exception. I am poor, and don’t have any Pithing Needles, so I plan on packing Engineered Explosives as Tormod’s Crypt hate. It’s more proactive than Needle, I think, especially considering you can play it on any turn and use it before you go off with (hopefully) little disruption from your opponent. Of course, this sort of tactic can work well in the mirror, killing off hordes of Zombie tokens on the other side of the board, allowing you to win with relative ease.

This is my personal bit of “tech”, and honestly, it’s probably not that good; it’s simply a stop-gap measure since I don’t have Pithing Needles. But if you see my name attached to a blue square in Flores’ article… well I guess I was wrong. But, alas, this is the last of my Dredge talk. On to the venerable “Pet Deck” section.

GroATog is a deck near and dear to my heart. Not because it’s won me anything (because it hasn’t) but because I love decks that pack a high degree of threat with a large amount of disruption. A deck with creatures that are nearly autowins in and of themselves, coupled with spells that only make said creatures better, seems like a great combination.

Back in the day, GAT, or Miracle Grow, was conceived as an Extended deck. Yesterday’s Extended is today’s Vintage, and the sheer power of the cardpool makes an already disgusting deck even worse. TODAY’S Extended, on the other hand, is certainly less outlandish, if seemingly more broken. The problem with GAT is that, despite its low low manacurve (free counterspells?!), it’s still highly mana intensive in that it needs a fair amount of mana to get going.

Oh, and don’t get me started on the fact that we can’t play Gush anymore.

But enough of my gushing (ha!) about how awesome the idea is, let’s get to the list.

Extended GroAGoyf
4 Quirion Dryad
2 Tarmogoyf

2 Pact of Negation
4 Ponder
4 Spell Snare
4 Force Spike
4 Opt
4 Smother
4 Thoughtsieze
4 Duress
4 Extirpate
4 Chrome Mox

4 Polluted Delta
4 Watery Grave
4 Overgrown Tomb
4 Breeding Pool

We’ll first break the deck down into its fundamental components. First, the creatures: Quirion Dryad and Tarmogoyf. These two creatures are, essentially, the biggest reason to play this deck. Both get extremely large very quickly, at a relatively low mana investment. They get bigger playing spells you’d be playing anyway. What’s not to like?

Second, the card draw. Ponder and Opt are both good at what they do. Refilling your hand with more cheap spells while simultaneously getting bigger creatures is the way to go. Opt may end up being Sleight of Hand one day, but we’ll see how testing goes.

Third, protection and disruption. Spell Snare is arguably the best counter in Extended right now. So many of the threats in the format are two mana, plus it stops things like, say, Engineered Explosives set on two, essentially saving you from Two-for-One Land. Force Spike is good early game disruption, and, by the way, stops Dread Return in its tracks most of the time. Pact of Negation is a two-of solely because either it will win you the game on the spot or you will have to pay the upkeep, and both of those situations are pretty rare. It’s just the closest thing to Force of Will we have anymore. Smother kills dudes. ‘nuff said there. Rounding out disruption we have Duress and Thoughtseize, although these slots could possibly go to Cabal Therapy instead.

Finally we come to mana. Chrome Mox powers out some extra mana on turns one through three, and then there’s the obligatory fetchland/shockland package. Pretty simplistic, eh?

Unfortunately, I don’t have all the time in the world, so I can’t test my decks as much as I want. Theoretically, the gameplan against most of the field is pretty basic: stick a dude and then make it bigger with card drawing and counterspells. How we’d go about that depends on the matchup. Doran will require you to play out the spells that you can, while maintaining a slight edge with your x+1/x+1 sized dude (thanks to their Doran). Interestingly, though, the plan for both decks is pretty similar: disrupt them long enough to get a dude to stick and then win with Dude Beatz. Next Level Blue is a tough one, but if you can get yourself in a good position early, it will be hard for them to get Vedalken Shakles on your Dryads. Also, Spell Snare can keep them off Counterbalance lock. Dredge just makes you hope you’re a better (or luckier) player than they are.

As I see it, those are the three major archetypes heading into a PTQ. If you expect something else in your meta, test against it. (Duh.)

The main problem I have with the deck as I have it built right now is that it’s simply mana-light. Sure, the curve is SUPER low, but it doesn’t really get fast, allowing the game to explode like it can in Vintage. A large part of that is due to the fast mana and inherent speed of Vintage, plus the combo-goodness of Gush + Fastbond.

Obviously, I did not include the sideboard. The real reason is that I am lazy. I didn’t test it at all, and I don’t really know the weaknesses of the deck besides “it’s just too slow”.

So there it is: rickiep00h’s GroAGoyf. Test it. Make suggestions. Goof around with it. Heck, if you really want to, take it to a PTQ and see how it does. See if it surprises any of us.

Random thoughts today.

 

First, it is extremely difficult writing new stuff every week without having an editor to bounce ideas off of. Or to give you an assignment. So I don’t really have much of a theme or a structure this week, but I’ve got some Standard thoughts, a few comments about Morningtide, and pimping a new site. (If they even let this article get to “spotlight” status with it, we’ll find out…)

 

Standard is my haven for pet decks and random ideas a lot of the time, because it’s usually the format that everyone’s talking about or has the cards in my brain the deepest at any given time. So, in the light of the current Extended flurry of articles on the “mainstream” sites, I’d like to offer up a couple of my current Standard lists. Both of the following started out as almost pure netdecks, but have evolved for reasons I’ll go into after the list. First off is a Goblin list that I’ve run the past couple weeks at FNM.

 

4 Sulfurous Springs

2 Graven Cairns

1 Pendelhaven

7 Swamp

10 Mountain

 

2 Greater Gargadon

3 Siege-Gang Commander

3 Marsh Flitter

4 Mogg War Marshal

4 Mogg Fanatic

4 Knucklebone Witch

4 Mad Auntie

4 Mudbutton Torchrunner

4 Squeaking Pie Sneak

 

4 Boggart Shenanigans

 

The original list had one more Flitter and one more Commander, and two Wort, Boggart Auntie in place of my Gargadons. I don’t recall exactly who that list was credited to, but the general point of the deck was to power out a ton of goblin tokens and overwhelm the opponent’s defenses, with the Shenanigans in place to still deal damage with the inevitability of mass goblin deaths due to Wrath of God effects and plain ol’ blocking. However, due to limited card numbers on my end, I cut the Flitter and the Commander and added Big Gargs, and realized that this has great potential for a combo endgame plan.

 

It goes something like this: make a ton of tokens, get Shenanigans into play. Hope for a) them to Wrath, or b) you to have a Gargadon suspended to sac a ton of dudes to. For this reason I may cut one Squeaking Pie Sneak (as there’s a lot of black running around, as well as artifact creatures) and one Mudbutt to add in two more Garagadons to up the combo potential of the deck. Probably more than anything, though, this deck is a ton of fun to play, especially when you puke out most of your hand in the first 3 turns and then force your opponent to deal with it or lose.

 

The other deck is an evolution of Mono Blue Control, and it looks something like this:

 

21 Island

2 Dreadship Reef

2 Urza’s Factory

 

1 Aeon Chronicler

2 Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir

2 Guile

2 Venser, Shaper Savant

 

4 Ancestral Vision

4 Mystical Teachings

4 Rune Snag

4 Cancel

4 Cryptic Command

3 Pact of Negation

2 Spell Burst

2 Commandeer

1 Take Possession

 

I’m thinking of calling it something like “Wafo-Tapa dot dec”, as it combines a sizable portion of his tech, plus some long-forgotten goodies like the potential for a Spell Burst lock and Commandeer. Oh yeah, and the Teachings engine. While not as flexible as the UB or UBr or UBw lists, the mono-U build is both flexible and powerful. By lessening the reliance on the Guile/Pact interaction, you open up some space for arguable the most powerful tutor engine in Standard. Just tonight I won a game by Commandeering a Garruk Wildspeaker, pumping out dudes for a few turns with counter protection, and then going end-of-turn Teachings for Cryptic Command, tapping out all their blockers and swinging for 21 damage.

 

I noticed, also, that the Sonic Boom lists weren’t really running anything for long game, as the deck simply assumes it will draw into the Guile lock and win soon after. That doesn’t always happen, so I included the Urza’s Factories, as it’s probably the most reliable win condition for a control deck nowadays (oh, Skeletal Vampire, how I pine for you!)

 

The biggest problem I can see right now is the inevitable aggro rush. I would include Deserts, but I have none. I may just have to hope to outplay them, or grab enough Commands to essentially Fog them until I can get a full lockdown. Which takes a long, long time. Also, I may change the Rune Snags to Delays, as Teferi turns it into a hard counter, plus removal from game.

 

Moving on to Morningtide, there is only one real point I have to make, since the set has essentially been talked to death at this point. I am upset with the “more of the same” sort of thing the set has going. Sure, a few current archetypes got a boost (notably Faeries/Rogues and Kithkin/Soldiers), but, aside from the chase rares in the set, like Murmuring Bosk, Countryside Crusher, Chameleon Colossus, and Mutavault, I’m thoroughly underwhelmed with the set. Maybe it’s because I don’t play it in limited (my experience with it is limited solely to Use ‘em or Lose ‘em/Pack Wars), but I don’t like the linearity of the set. Sorry. Not my cup o’ tea. I will say, though, that even if Shadowmoor is More of the Same Part Two, at least it will have a nice, dark setting. Not all happy-cheery like Lorwyn “block”.

 

Side note: have you ever really looked at Boggart Shenanigans? Between the art and the flavor text, it’s downright unsettling.

 

As my last topic, and what will most likely be the thing that might not grant this article “spotlight” status, I’d like to talk about the MtG Players Union.

 

As some readers know, but some don’t (hence my mentioning it), Wizards announced a significant budget reduction in Organized Play, amounting to a loss of the following:

 

-one full Pro Tour (and its accompanying PTQ season)

-a full elimination of JSS/MSS

-elimination of the amateur prize payout at Grand Prix tournaments

-a restructuring of the Pro Player’s Club

 

What does that mean for John P. Magic, the kitchen-table guy? Probably not much. But for the guys out there reading the articles and driving the metagame, as well as the actual full-on pros, it means quite a lot. The restructuring of the PPC levels means that a Pro Point doesn’t go as far as it used to, and Level 3 Pros don’t get their appearance fee, meaning their invite is meaningless without the means to get a plane ticket to *insert bizarre location here*. So, to make up for it, WotC is allowing Level 3s to play in PTQs to win a plane ticket to the Pro Tour location. Of course, if a pro wins the PTQ, their invitation that they already have doesn’t pass down, meaning someone else who is “technically” qualified to go really can’t, and… well, it’s complicated.

 

But for these very complicated reasons, Raphael Levy has started www.mtgplayersunion.com. As of this writing, they have secured a public forum at PT: Kuala Lumpur with the heads of Organized Play to help sort out the financial mess this has become for anyone on or trying to GET on the Pro Tour “gravy train”. If you’d like to show your support, or just poke around and see what’s going on in the world of high-level Magic politics, head over to www.mtgplayersunion.com. I’d like to stress that the Player’s Union is not a “union” in the traditional sense. It’s a collective bargaining unit, sure, but it’s more a facilitator of communication to WotC than it is a threatening arbitration group.

 

As a final note I’d like to mention that I probably won’t be trying to keep a set schedule for updates other than “posting once a week”. Sometimes inspiration takes a while to hit, sometimes I haven’t been playtesting like I should, and other times things like real life get in the way. So see you “next week”, wherein I probably talk about my next PTQ… Dredge!

So here it is: the final installment of the Rickvitational series. What does that mean? Build Your Own Block! *fanfare*

 

After covering Extended and Cube Draft, we move onto the best test of deckbuilding skill we could think of without playing Highlander. Here’s how it works.

 

Since Ice Age, way back in the day, Magic has been built on the Block system. That is, each year there is a large set, and two smaller sets which are related to it mechanically and thematically. Originally, Ice Age was built as a “standalone” set that could be played on its own, separate from the base sets of Alpha, Beta, Unlimited, and Revised. However, since Ice Age was mechanically identical to all the previous sets, the “standalone” Ice Age worked when integrated into the other sets. So rather than producing a new game every year, they began to simply change the flavor and add new mechanics, and call it the next block (or cycle, if you use the Tempest-era term).

 

“So what,” you’re probably saying, “we all know this already.” This is true. You probably do. But Build Your Own Block really makes you confront that design structure head-on. And, if you want it to, it can teach you a lot about the game that you’ve forgotten. But to talk about that, we first need to discuss how the format works.

 

Starting with Ice Age and working forward, every set that isn’t a Core Set or Un-set has been released as a part of a block, in the large-small-small format. So what you do is pick a large set, a middle set, and a final set, all from unrelated blocks, and use that for your card pool. Then you find a friend that has done the same thing (probably using other sets) and then you play. This allows you to play Block Constructed formats that never existed, like Ravnica-Alliances-Weatherlight versus Time Spiral-Urza’s Legacy-Apocalypse. Or Onslaught-Morningtide-Coldsnap. The possibilities, while not being endless, are certainly multitudinous enough to be challenging to a large number of players.

 

The folks at Top8Magic.com (Mike Flores and Brian David-Marshall, et al.) used this format in their Mockvitational this year, and they show you can build decks like Illusions/Donate, Deadguy Ale, and others. The Rickvitational showed off a few decks like The Rock and Dark Depths combo. I’ll talk about the latter right now.

 

The list:

 

Dark Depths Combo, Rav-Darksteel-Coldsnap

4 Dark Depths

4 Overgrown Tomb

4 Watery Grave

4 Snow-Covered Island

3 Snow-Covered Forest

3 Snow-Covered Swamp

 

4 Rimefeather Owl

4 Boreal Druid

3 Rimebound Dead

4 Birds of Paradise

3 Civic Wayfinder

 

4 Aether Snap

3 Into the North

3 Rune Snag

4 Remand

4 Telling Time

2 Brainspoil

 

The sideboard, frankly, is irrelevant as it was made solely for this metagame.

 

The deck’s premise is simple: get Dark Depths into play, cast Aether Snap to remove all the counters, put a 20/20 indestructible flier into play, win. The rest of the cards, then, should be stall, combo enablers, or combo protectors. “But what if they have (insert creature sac effect here)?” “Pishaw,” says this deck, “I have a 20/20 flier!” So we’ll go the deck by card group.

 

The combo:

Dark Depths and Aether Snap

 

The stall:

Rimebound Dead, Remand, Rune Snag

 

The enablers:

Into the North, Brainspoil, Civic Wayfinder, Boreal Druid, Telling Time

 

The protectors:

Remand, Rune Snag

 

With the amount of land search capabilities, it’s rare to not have enough land to cast Aether Snap with counterspell backup. The only problem the deck has is living long enough to swing with the 20/20, and having the 20/20 live long enough to swing. But many games can be won by turning a 20/20 indestructible flier sideways, so the deck got built and went 2-1 in the BYOB segment.

 

The Rock build was a Rav-Planar Chaos-Apocalypse deck that abused the fact that Ravnica and Apocalypse had both sets of green/black and black/white lands and all the best multicolor cards for those colors. And that Planar Chaos has Teneb, the Harvester in it. The list looks like this:

 

The Rock, Rav-PC-Apocalypse

1 Vitu-Ghazi, the City Tree

2 Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth

4 Overgrown Tomb

4 Caves of Koilos

4 Temple Garden

2 Swamp

4 Forest

2 Plains

 

1 Teneb, the Harvester

2 Spiritmonger

4 Loxodon Heirarch

1 Magus of the Coffers

2 Necravolver

4 Birds of Paradise

 

1 Plague Boiler

1 Pernicious Deed

4 Putrefy

2 Death Grasp

4 Vindicate

4 Damnation

3 Phyrexian Arena

2 Dimir Machinations

2 Farseek

 

The sideboard contained Aven Riftwatcher, Glare of Subdual, and Extirpate. And other stuff.

 

It played out as most Rock decks do, providing disruption and board control, then playing its midrange bombs like Heirarch and winning from there. As it did, going 2-1.

 

The remaining decks were a Rav-PC-Weatherlight list that was a slightly different take on Rock, featuring Angelic Renewal; an infinite-turn Fifth Dawn-centric deck; a mono-blue Time Spiral-Stronghold-Coldsnap Pickles deck; and my Madness deck that I’ve mentioned a few times in this very blog.

 

I highly suggest this format. It can be a deckbuilder’s nightmare sometimes, but it allows you to find nuggets like Exodus’s Manabond (look it up!) and lets you play things like Dark Depths and possibly win with it.

 

As a closer this week, I’d like to make a couple comments about Standard. The first is that Standard right now is boring as hell. There’s no overtly powerful deck out there. While MaRo’s vision of a Tier 2 metagame is noble, in practice it’s becoming very stale. I don’t want overly broken decks like Affinity or Dredge in my Standard format, but I don’t want to see a sea of B/G Elves decks over and over again, only occasionally broken up by Faeries or R/G Big Mana. And a horribly out-of-place Dragonstorm* deck.

 

My second comment is that Morningtide doesn’t really look like it will be doing much to change that, except maybe to make Kithkin even more irritating. The Goblin banneret may make things a little faster, but past that, I don’t think we’ll get much better. Here’s hoping Shadowmoor is actually interesting…

 

*Does anyone else still play this deck? There’s usually one per week at FNM and it always gets bounced out by people who actually know how to play Magic.

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