Mono-Red Burn is an archetype that gets a lot of stick. Some players turn their nose up at such a brainless deck: Isn’t it a newbie mistake to Lightning Bolt your opponent on turn 1? Burn is offensive to the palate of such players, who are more used to dining on tasty morsels of card advantage and the card-based joy that is a good Counterspell war. Burn is the McDonalds’ happy meal to Control’s filet mignon fire grilled steak – it’s quick, it’s not pretty, but it’s cheap and it gets the job done. That low price-tag is what makes it of interest to me, so before we get into a discussion of building or playing the deck let’s see just how cheap some recently successful builds are.

For a competitive deck taking no budget constraints into consideration, $100 is impressively inexpensive. I had better outline my theory on “budget” deckbuilding in a competitive sense briefly – if you are trying to win a pro tour qualifier, there is no point going in with a hamstrung build of your deck. Though you might be able to get by with Arcane Sanctum instead of Glacial Fortress in your UW deck doing so is one more obstacle in your path, and winning 7 or 8 rounds of swiss in a row followed by a top 8 is hard enough without extra obstacles. You are paying $25 or so, depending on location, to enter this event – if you are going in with an inferior version of your deck due to cost you should consider whether that $25 would be better spent on the cards needed to perfect your 75.

That is not to say you have to play the most expensive cards to succeed, just the best ones for your deck. This article is an attempt to show that you can play the best cards for a particular deck type without breaking the bank. Deck selection is the key here rather than ‘budgetizing’ a more expensive deck; a $100 burn deck will perform better than a $200 budget Zoo deck with an unreliable manabase and no ‘Goyfs.

Card Choices

These two decks are very similar – despite being spaced over 2 months apart, there is not much in the way of innovation in either the lands or the creatures. They were both successful though, so we can assume they are doing something right. The game plan of such a deck is very simple – deal as much damage as possible as directly as possible to the opponent until they fall over. This is not difficult to do with red spells, especially when your opponent is helping you out by taking damage from their own fetch lands and shock lands and lowering your target from 20 to perhaps 15. Let’s take a quick look at the cards selected.

Creatures

Goblin Guide – The latest fruit of Wizards efforts to push creatures to the forefront of the game, the drawback on this card becomes more and more irrelevant the earlier your deck can kill the opponent. There is no real danger of drawing your opponent out of manascrew if you plan to kill them on the third turn. That makes this little goblin essentially Ball Lightning for R, in that he deals 6 damage by turn 3. Definitely worth the investment.

Spark Elemental – Essentially a Lava Spike that requires an attack phase, I can see the argument for dropping this old standby especially considering his modern competition.

Mogg Fanatic – There aren’t many 1 toughness creatures going around extended tables these days and this little goblin is largely chosen as an anti-dredge card that isn’t dead elsewhere – sacrificing him will remove all your Dredge opponent’s Bridge From Belows from his graveyard, slowing him down considerably.

Keldon Marauders – Has the potential to do 5 damage, and is guaranteed to do 2 even if removed. If you’ve ever played with this guy you’ll know just how strong he is in aggressive decks.

Hellspark Elemental – A reusable Spark Elemental, this new version is a pretty big upgrade and gives you some crucial reach when you run out of spells in hand. My initial analysis of the deck tells me I don’t want to drop this card.

Spells

Lightning Bolt, Lava Spike, Rift Bolt – These are essentially the same spell and form the core of the deck, which has lead to it being nicknamed the Lava Spike deck or the Lightning Bolt deck in the past. I’d need a compelling reason to touch any of these.

Incinerate – When you really, really want to play more than 12 Lava Spikes. I would like to find a better burn spell than this, given the company.

Shrapnel Blast – The only reason to play the artifact lands in the deck but this spell is very desirable – 5 damage is a huge chunk of your opponent’s life. I think this package is what pushes the deck up to competitive status which makes it unfortunate that it requires the expensive Blinkmoth Nexus.

Magma Jet – Scrying is great in a deck like this, topdecked lands are almost worthless most of the time and skimming them off the top before you draw them keeps you drawing gas for the fire. This is certainly worth considering though it’s not an automatic choice.

Molten Rain – Great for dealing with troublesome lands while keeping the damage flowing. Can slow down Dark Depths, Zoo and Scapeshift decks amongst others, giving you time to finish them off. The value of this card will depend on your expected metagame.

Flames of the Blood Hand – Similarly, this card could be great or only so-so depending on the metagame. Crazycow was obviously concerned about lifegain between these and the Everlasting Torment in the sideboard. Your mileage may vary.

Blood Moon – This is the only sideboard card I want to mention – Blood Moon does a similar job to Molten Rain against a lot of extended decks, slowing them down long enough for you to run them over with burn. It is expensive compared to the rest of the deck – both in terms of dollars and mana – but the effect is very difficult to answer in a timely fashion for most of your competition.

Lands

Mountain – An exceptionally powerful card across multiple formats, it gives you a red mana every turn which can be used to cast your spells.

Great Furnace – Nearly a strict upgrade in this deck, it’s a mountain you can sacrifice to Shrapnel Blast. Darksteel Citadel is just Furnace number 5 (and possibly 6).

Teetering Peaks – Same as above, but if you have an attacking creature – which you usually do – it gives you a virtually free 2 damage. Coming into play tapped is something of a drawback, but given that you were just going to use an untapped land to spend a card and deal burn your foe for 3 it is not so bad.

Blinkmoth Nexus – A land for the early game, an evasive creature & shrapnel fodder in the late game, this is a very handy card to have in your deck. Definitely earns its comparatively high wage.

Bolt You, Blast You, Game?

My, is it turn 3 already? That’s all we have time for this week, and we haven’t even touched on how to play the deck; nor how to make best use of the long gaps between rounds while those Thopter mirrors grind their way to an indecisive conclusion. I hope you’ve enjoyed this discussion of a popular, powerful and inexpensive deck that is frequently underestimated.

Please leave a comment letting me know your thoughts on the archetype and especially on the article – what you liked, what you didn’t like, what you want to see from me in the coming weeks. You can catch up with me in the meantime on twitter and on my blog and check out some of the other great articles on this very site. Thanks for reading!

I’ve seen several people share decks over twitter in various forms. Some would compress and abbreviate the card names to try and fit it into one or two tweets, then others would utilize third party sites not aimed at Magic players such as shorttext.com. With the explosion of Magic players and the Magic community on twitter we wanted to build an application which took people’s decks and easily (and shortly) shared them online.

So now we are proud to bring you a beta version of this system. Let’s look it over.

In its simplest form you just copy and paste the deck into the text area. It parses lines that begin with a number as a card entry, so even if there is only 1 of a card in the deck, you must preface the line with a “1.” We will be fixing this in the future as we finish our database of Magic cards. Also currently, the system does not validate card names. So if you typo it, or use a nickname, the link provided will only bring up an error page.

Half way through our first official launch day, we rolled out a number of more features. We added specific fields for title, author, and password.

1. Title – This is an optional field, and in it you can define the title of the deck.
2. Author – If there is an author to be credited, then you may enter it in this field. Again, it is optional.
3. Password – This allows a user to set their password and use it to come back and edit the deck later.

But once the deck is entered and saved, you will be directed to a page to view the deck such that it will look like as follows.

On this deck you’re viewing the deck list as our system parses it. Providing an easy to use checkbox view. At the bottom are two buttons, the left one will take you to our sponsor CoolStuffInc.com and allow you to purchase the entire deck from them. Or you can check specific cards and click the right button to get only those from CoolStuffInc.com.

Also on this view you’ll see the big easy to find short link (shorter than most bit.ly links) for this page. Also above it you’ll see the Tweetmeme button which shows you how much it has been tweeted. And then next to it is a button to allow you to send this deck via email to yourself or a friend.

And that wraps up most of the current features, we’ve got a number more in the works:

• API – We’re working on an api so that other developers can build and expand on our system.
• Card validation – Once Wizards publishes the updated Oracle changes we’ll go through and set up the card database to use for validation.
• Public / Private decks – Allow users to define whether the deck is “public” or “private.” In this case it means whether we can advertise the deck elsewhere or on mtgurl.com, if someone types in the url it will still be visible. This feature could also include a password for accessing, though this might be confusing with the editing password.
• Deck Formats – Along with the card validation we’ll be able to define the deck format legality.
• Deck Analysis – Also tied with the card validation we’ll be sharing some deck stats including mana curve and other stats.
• Export Decks – Allow you to export the decks in various formats for programs such as Magic Online, Magic Workstation and other formats.
• Embeddable Widgets – For easy embedding in your own personal blogs.
• Deeper Twitter integration – Have embedded twitter search to see who is tweeting about the deck.
• Facebook integration – For allowing the sharing of decks over Facebook.
• Comments – Allow people to leave comments or notes about decks.

As you can see, lots to do. So stay tuned!

To start we need to look at a few factors of the current Standard environment. One of the first factors I see is that we have a set rotating out this means that we will want to have a general idea of what the new set will be like before we go and build our deck. So my plan is to look over any spoilers I can find including the ManaNation spoilers on the site and see what we can find out. I will not talk about the specific cards in the spoilers but this will give us a general idea of what we are going to see in the new set and allow us to start looking into the basic design of our deck. Other things that we need are the current decks being used. Most new decks are variations on the current decks in standard so we need to know what is being used and how it is being used, this way we can use old ideas for our new deck and know what weaknesses the other decks will or may currently have.

After looking at the various spoiler cards (67 officially spoiled cards, including land at the time this article was written) we can see some very strong cards coming to the forefront of magic. We know that with the change we lose a lot of competitive decks but the new cards coming out seem rather high in casting cost, so it’s hard to say if there will be a major change to how the game is played. The major things I am seeing that will probably go into a deck are Landfall, Allies, and Quests. We see kicker and traps as well but I don’t think this will change the format much as kicker never seemed to live up to its full potential, and I think traps are costed too high to play as you don’t want to have to wait for a “Magical” moment to play them. So judging by what I see I would say the next big thing for me will be Landfall. And Landfall seems like it would go great in a Red/Green Ramp deck.

Now you may wonder why I say this. Let’s start with the obvious: We have an abundance of land search in the format which is why ramp decks always stick around in one way or another. With Landfall the deck automatically gets a bonus for finding lands. So it’s an auto include to have Landfall in any ramp deck. I chose red for a specific reason, we need creature control and on top of that it has a nice landfall ability that gives us just that. Valakut, the Molten Pinnacle is a great landfall card that you can have multiple in play can wipe out a creature board or kill the opponent quickly. To use this it requires a lot of red land but with land search we can accomplish just that. Green was chosen for its ability to search for lands not to mention green has the best blockers to build up defense while you search for your lands. The rest is just filler for a basic red/green deck.

This doesn’t mean that we will use red and green, this just means that the way Zendikar is unfolding we are seeing lots of strong red and green that make me want to move this way. If fairies manage to stick around after the change (miracle needed here) this deck idea would work as landfall is harder to counter and lands are almost impossible to stop from coming into play (Right now I believe it is impossible to stop them but new cards come out all the time). So this means that all counterspell decks will have a tough time dealing with this deck and it should be fast enough to hold back white weenie in whatever form it will take.

Will this idea work? I don’t know. No one will know until we have more information on the new set and we can play test. This means that the ideas we take away will change constantly as new cards come out. Everything evolves and so should our thought pattern. So that being said we need to decide what direction to take our new standard deck. Do we combo (Three to four cards to create a game winning situation), Overrun (amass a huge army and Attack), control (Keep the opponent on the defensive while we slowly win) or clear a path (Burn everything needed to attack straight on)? These are some of the different styles we can choose from, these are all very effective. The chatter online seems to be saying creature heavy is the way to go so I would say ‘clearing a path’ or ‘overrunning’ would be our best bet.

Now I know there are cards some people do not like in this deck but, I decided to build the deck this way so that it was well rounded and it accomplished its goal the best way it could. So after a few more preview cards and searching the current standard cards we should start seeing this deck evolve. So for next time we will quickly review this info and start choosing cards.

So before my next article take on one of the below tasks and post your thoughts in the comments!

The 1st choice – Criticize: Don’t like the deck idea or don’t think it will work? Tell me and why and give ideas as to how to change it or what deck idea you think will work.

The 2nd choice – Homework: Look through the spoiler’s and see potential cards we can use. As well as, go through current card lists and come up with cards that will work well for this deck.

As my experienced readers already know September is a rather interesting month for the Magic playing community. Here we sit on the edge of possible major change. How major? We don’t know. With the joy of the release of Zendikar we also have the loss of Lorwyn/Shadowmoor from Standard and the loss of Onslaught from Extended. With that loss of cards we will find some shifts in the metagame. Some blocks radically change an environment, such as Mirrodin. Or they may cause little to no shifts like Kamigawa. In the back of everyone’s mind is “What Now?”

Because of this state of flux, many players avoid focusing on decks. It’s like running a business where a good percentage of your employees are about to retire or leave. For some companies like TEPS Inc. it’s time for bankruptcy. For others like the FAE conglomerate it’s time for you to focus your portfolio into just the Extended market. Hopefully your deck of choice is like TSC (Time Sieve Combo) with many young and energetic employees just waiting to see what rivals will try to push their way into the picture. Whether your deck is decimated by lose or still intact it’s still nearly impossible to test or prepare for any possible match-ups.

What I always find myself doing this time of year is drafting and scouring the net for spoilers. As of the writing of this piece there are a total of 8 cards beyond the basic lands spoiled with 4 of them being published right here on Mananation before anywhere else. In previous summers the drafting has been sort of stale but this year M10 has really made me happy. I really can’t think of a time I’ve enjoyed drafting more. I thought this was the case for my students as well. That is until last Tuesday. I had reshuffled our rarity piles and was starting to “rebuild” packs but no one was lending a hand. Turns out everyone was jazzed about Extended and debating which deck would prevail at Austin.

While I will not claim that my guys are great prognosticators of the metagame I was surprised by the depth of their conversation.

It all started with the Cascade/Suspend decks. If you haven’t seen a list for these I’ll provide a few shortly. The idea is pretty linear and not hard to understand. I actually find it humorous how many different people claim to have “designed” this broken deck. Basically each deck uses one of the Suspend cards that had no way to hard cast them. Ancestral Vision or Lotus Bloom are prime examples that have seen play so far. The rest haven’t really seen much play because they either take to much time to cast and wait or their effect doesn’t mesh well with enough cards to warrant a deck. Now the mechanic of Cascade can bypass the cast and wait cost. If the rest of the deck is tailored correctly then you can be assured of hitting the target suspend spell once you cast the Cascade spell. The main question is how to abuse that interaction.

The first step in all the decks is to stock up on the 3 casting cost Cascade Spells; Ardent Plea, Demonic Dread, and Violent Outburst. The number varies from deck to deck but it’s always enough to assure having a least one or two in hand when you have enough mana to cast them. From there the decks differ in significant fashion.

The most popular form of the deck idea uses Hypergenesis as its bomb spell. The idea is to have some uber awesome permanent on the field and hope that your opponent doesn’t have one himself. What Uber-coolness you use is up to you. Some go for the Magister Sphinx and Wound Reflection combo. Others go for comes into play effects like Bogarden Hellkite, Angel of Despair, or Woodfall Primus. You can also go hasty with Akroma, Angel of Wrath, Karrthus, Tyrant of Jund, or Hellkite Overlord. I’ve even seen Darksteel Colossus[card] and [card]Empyrial Archangel thrown in. There is plenty of room in the deck for any mix you want. Most decks run 20 lands, 10 cascade spells, 3 Hypergenesis’s and the rest is open. I personally recommend using 4 Simian Sprit Guide and 4 Serum Powders as well.

An example list would look like this. This one was piloted by Johannes Reding

One of the bonuses about using the cyclers is the fact that you scour through your deck much faster than other decks so you do not need as many Cascade Spells but you do need to have a full set of Living End since you increase your chance of drawing it during the early stages of the game. A major drawback of Living End is the fact that it’s a one shot deal. If your opponent can reestablish your second Living End only puts them back to the point where the first one resolved.

My own current deck list for Living End is this.

It’s just basic Rock, Paper, Scissors in my mind. HyperCascade is the Rock aggro deck, Living Cascade is the Paper combo deck, and Restore Cascade is the Scissors control deck. I’m really not sure which is best but I do know that I would not carry any of them into Austin.

There will be just too much hate for them out there. All decks have easy access to Chalice of the Void set at 0 on turn 1. In fact I think the mass hate that will be packed for these decks may make room for other contenders to reemerge. Affinity will love it when the Sideboard artifact hate decreases. Fae will love to see a decrease in Fallout and Stage. Elfball is still an explosive deck. I even suspect there maybe a Tooth and Nail possibility since it can main the Affinity and Fae hate. Who knows?? I just wouldn’t want to invest all the resources that a Pro has to invest and carry one of the above Cascade decks.

The question to my Internet Class this week is: “Assuming you had a Blue Envelope, what would you carry to Austin?”

Ding. There’s the bell. Next class will be a Lesson that expands from the Rule of Nine we discussed earlier so refresh your mind on that if necessary.

Class Dismissed.

Luca Ravagli beat out the field with his Cruel Control deck.

2 Cascade Bluffs
1 Exotic Orchard
3 Island
2 Mystic Gate
4 Reflecting Pool
3 Sunken Ruins
2 Vivid Crag
4 Vivid Creek
3 Vivid Marsh
2 Vivid Meadow

1 Baneslayer Angel
1 Bogardan Hellkite
1 Broodmate Dragon
3 Mulldrifter
3 Plumeveil

2 Agony Warp
3 Broken Ambitions
3 Cruel Ultimatum
4 Cryptic Command
1 Doom Blade
4 Esper Charm
1 Essence Scatter
3 Hallowed Burial
4 Volcanic Fallout

Gilles Mongilardi took the top spot in France as well.

This week’s episode is also delayed. It will be up late Tuesday. Lee and Trick look at the top 8 decks from the first Pro Tour Austin PTQ.

So what’s interesting here?

1. Each of the intro packs have identical mana structure. Given the universal gold theme of the set, each of these decks is two color with 8 mana of each color, and 2 Terramorphic Expanses.
2. All color pairs are allied colors. So we see Red/Black, Black/Blue, Blue/White, White/Green, and Green/Red. No enemy color pairs.
3. We get a strong sense that we’ll see Terminate reprinted, as well as a few other suggested possible reprints.

Here are the provided decklists. Any unlinked cards are cards which will be released with Alara Reborn.

Eternal Siege

8 Forest
8 Plains
2 Terramorphic Expanse

1 Beacon Behemoth
1 Dauntless Escort
1 Drumhunter
1 Enlisted Wurm
1 Godtoucher
2 Grizzled Leotau
1 Knight of New Alara
1 Mosstodon
2 Pale Recluse
1 Qasali Pridemage
1 Sigiled Behemoth
1 Sunseed Nurturer
1 Vagrant Plowbeasts

1 Captured Sunlight
2 Excommunicate
1 Mighty Emergence
1 Path to Exile
1 Reborn Hope
1 Sigil Blessing
1 Sigil of the Nayan Gods

Legion Aloft

8 Island
8 Plains
2 Terramorphic Expanse

2 Arsenal Thresher
1 Aven Mimeomancer
1 Bottle Gnomes
1 Esper Cormorants
2 Ethercaste Knight
1 Etherium Sculptor
1 Filigree Angel
2 Glassdust Hulk
1 Metallurgeon
2 Sanctum Plowbeast
1 Wall of Denial

1 Kiss of the Amesha
1 Offering to Asha
2 Pacifism
1 Path to Exile
1 Protomatter Powder
1 Stormcaller’s Boon
1 Whispersilk Cloak

Unnatural Schemes

8 Island
8 Swamp
2 Terramorphic Expanse

2 Architects of Will
1 Fatestitcher
2 Grixis Slavedriver
2 Jhessian Zombies
1 Lich Lord of Unx
2 Nantuko Husk
1 Nemesis of Reason
1 Phantom Warrior
2 Tidehollow Strix
1 Vedalken Ghoul

2 Agony Warp
1 Brainbite
1 Countersquall
1 Deny Reality
2 Essence Drain
1 Soul Manipulation

Dead Ahead

8 Mountain
8 Swamp
2 Terramorphic Expanse

1 Blister Beetle
1 Blood Cultist
1 Bog Wraith
1 Deathbringer Thoctar
1 Dreg Reaver
2 Dregscape Zombie
2 Igneous Pouncer
1 Lightning Reaver
1 Monstrous Carabid
2 Sanity Gnawers
1 Singe-Mind Ogre
1 Viashino Skeleton
1 Viscera Dragger

1 Bituminous Blast
1 Blightning
1 Breath of Malfegor
1 Cruel Edict
1 Leonin Scimitar
2 Terminate

Rumbler

8 Forest
8 Mountain
2 Terramorphic Expanse

1 Algae Gharial
1 Blitz Hellion
1 Bloodbraid Elf
2 Dragon Fodder
1 Elvish Visionary
1 Gluttonous Slime
1 Godtracker of Jund
1 Gorger Wurm
1 Rhox Brute
1 Rockslide Elemental
1 Spellbreaker Behemoth
1 Thunder-Thrash Elder
1 Tukatongue Thallid
2 Valley Rannet

1 Colossal Might
2 Incinerate
1 Sangrite Surge
2 Shock
1 Vengeful Rebirth

Let’s get ready to rumble…

Match up – Faeries vs Doran 22 out of 50
(Faeries wins 44% of the time)

This is a tough matchup for both decks. Between the tricks that Faeries has and the removal and strength Doran rolls with. Each game can go either way with no clear cut system of winning.

One thing is for sure, Bitterblossom is huge in this matchup. The supporting cast can begin to thrive as you take 1 damage every turn. Whether it be to Spellstutter Sprites the threats Doran casts or to set up a [card title="Garruk"]Garruk Wildspeaker[/card] or a big Profane Command as a final blow, myriads of flying 1/1s can really add up and become abusive. Bitterblossom alone provides multiple permanents which is theoretically “broken” as it is. If you can quickly and easily remove or destroy it, you are 1 step closer to victory. Doran doesn’t suffer as much as Faeries does when losing the [card title="blossom"]Bitterblossom[/card], but can suffer as it’s an early threat for Doran.

Once you break the synergy of Faeries the game can easily sway to your favor. We used cards like Cloudthresher and Raking Canopy to disrupt the flow of fliers in bulk. Understand that Raking Canopy can cause merely a standstill, but with blossoms out, it just might be enough. Doran also uses the spot removal to finish off the other annoyances which pushed Doran ahead. Kitchen Finks also provided that last bit to completely sway the card and life advantage in your favor.

For Faeries, Cryptic Command is huge! Once you’re at 4 lands, utilizing Command or Mistbind Clique becomes crucial to your pursuit of victory. Use your [card title="Scions"]Scions of Oona[/card] as counterspells is another way to gain card advantage, but ultimately, it’s all about your 4 cc spells.

Match – Faeries vs Merfolk 29 out of 50
(Faeries wins 58% of the time)

This is definitely NOT as tough a match up in block as it is in Standard. Essentially you have 4 LESS threats against the Faerie deck. Which is just enough to sit easy and build up your army against the Fish. Fish are relatively fast, but have virtually no versatility. If [card title="Reejerey"]Merrow Reejerey[/card] hits the table then it swings to the Merfolk advantage. Interestingly, I hear so many people say “Merfolk is stronger than Faeries” yet it has yet to show very many impressive finishes. I’m not sure if it’s because of the sheer number of Faeries players overwhelming the fish or perhaps it’s just the fragile nature of Merfolk. If the Merfolk do NOT get the [card title="Reejerey"]Merrow Reejerey[/card] (or the Lord of Atlantis in standard) it cannot overpower opponents or flourish with cantrip like creatures.

There is a card or two from Shadowmoor that really helps Merfolk push a victory through, but you’ll have to read the forums to get that info!

Match – Doran vs Merfolk 35 out of 50
(Doran wins 70% of the time)

The biggest part of this match up is the removal. Merfolk puts up some pressure early, but if you Thoughtseize the Reejerey on turn 1, turn 2 or turn 3 then it forces the Fish to live off of the top of the deck. You can also choose to kill the Stonybrook Banneret, which can also prevent explosive turns for the Merfolk. Doran and Profane can really swing momentum away from Merfolk.

Merfolk can win easily with a quick explosion on T3 or T4 if the Doran team doesn’t respond aggressively. Or, one can spawn a few fish and protect the game with countermagic. It’s not like this matchup is an auto-loss for Merfolk, but it is beneficial to have a “Lord” to help pave the way to victory.

Let’s look at some other decks:

Warriors – This deck is a GREAT theme in LLM Draft, where things are much more drawn out and the necessity for acceleration isn’t really a requirement. Haste is huge paired with the big P/T. What it suffers from in constructed is the speed that kills. Haste really isn’t a benefit when it happens after turn 4 and since LMS doesn’t have 1cc elves or birds it just runs like a slow Giant deck.

Goblins – It has the tools and it has the relative speed, but what it doesn’t have is synergy. Yes you can cast a myriad of Goblins, but should this deck be more of a Rogue Style or pure Goblin technology? It’s hard to say, and it’s hard to prove. Once you’ve emptied your hand, there really is nothing that you can do to refill with reinforcements.

Wilt Leaf – Boy o Boy did this deck just pop out of no where or what? My build is essentially Green/Black, with the creatures who just happen to be white also. They get BIG really fast and persist helps also. I was able to include Bitterblossom, which is another plus, but it’s the Leige and Shield of the Oversoul that REALLY boosts this deck to the winner’s circle. Turn 3 can have you with a Safehold Elite and Shield for a 4/4 indestructible. You say, “not impressive”, then how about a T4 Kitchen Finks with Shield for 5/4 that gained you 2 life? The hardest part about building this deck, is what to cut. Don’t forget that Doran can be part of this bashing which makes the deck even MORE likely to show up in Top 8s everywhere.

Mannequin – Take 20 – 28 creatures of your choice (regardless of color), put it in a green deck that can virtually cast anything, due to it’s versatility. Add to that removal and Makeshift Mannequin and you’ve got the answer to anything. This deck was very fun, yet very complicated to play. We had Shriekmaws, Doran, Reveilark, Mulldrifter, Kitchen Finks as our win condition and Mannequin to rub it in. I’m still looking to find a way to put it all together efficiently, so I’m not completely sold. The statistics during testing shows that card quality alone can win.

Kithkin – I’ve been working on Kithkin lately and have won a few matches here and there. It’s not a powerhouse, but I can assure you, it’s not as weak as Warriors and Goblins. I have found synergy and explosiveness in these little weenies which might just be enough.

I’m sure most of you know what cards make these decks good or even bad. What many people take for granted is the different ways they win. During a recent T2 tourney I participated in, I witnessed many faerie players using counterspells prematurely. What would have merely cost 2 to 8 points of damage, cost them the game eventually.

An example would be:
Faerie player has a T2 Bitterblossom in play. On Turn 4 Doran player plays Doran. Now the Faerie player had several faeries in hand, with 4+ lands in play, and he is getting a faerie every upkeep from the blossom, but he uses his only Spellstutter to counter the Doran. On the next turn, the Doran player successfully casts Doran and uses a small Profane command to take over the game and achieve victory.

Countering the Doran might not have been a bad play. However, the Faerie player didn’t have a lot of outs (in the counter spell area). So, taking 1 per turn to block Doran and laying EOT Faeries to pick away for the win was probably the better alternative. Someone could say, “the Faerie player didn’t know what the Doran player had” and I would return with “the Faerie player DID know what the Faerie player had”.

I won (split in finals) with a relatively rogue deck last week because I analyzed the strengths and weaknesses of the top 4 decks in Standard. My guess paid off and it can for you too. You just can’t be too hard-headed in thinking your way is always the right way. Remember what I said in an article recently, most people are either aggro or control players. You obviously don’t have to conform to win a tournament, and more often than not, winning with your own concoction is fulfilling. However, more often than not, you’re not going to win against decks that have had hundreds (if not thousands) of players playtesting with these “top tier” decks.

I’m not sure I can playtest block any more… I’m going to go back to MTGO3 and draft.

– Lee

So here’s the decklist:

What does this deck try to do?
The basic goal of this deck is use efficient global removal effects ([card title="Savra"]Savra, Queen of the Golgari[/card], Damnation, [card title="Kagemaro"]Kagemaro, First to Suffer[/card], Incremental Blight, Decree of Pain) to take charge of momentum in the game and have the ability to recover from potentially tempo swinging moves from your opponents through card drawing and graveyard recovery. Along the way there are efficient creatures, mana fixing, useful sac’ing outlets, and some tutors to make sure the deck performs smoothly and efficiently each game. The curve of the deck is pretty balanced, having a nice healthy array of two, three, and four drops while having some top-end power going up to Decree of Pain with a converted casting cost of eight.

All-Stars in the Deck
While on the whole I do really like every card in this deck, some just outperform and go above and beyond the call of duty:

Protean Hulk: This card is amazing. Especially in EDH where you will usually be seeing seven lands on the board consistently. Protean Hulk works well on three levels:

1. He’s a 6/6 creature, that in and of itself helps to make life a little more wonderful for you.
2. It really makes your opponents question how they should deal with your 6/6 threat, as they don’t want to sweep the board and then see you unleash a hoard of creatures that will be swinging when it comes to your turn.
3. There is a lot of nice synergy with all the sac outlets in this deck. Why wait for your opponents to make the decision to get rid of him? You can just do it yourself by sac’ing him or throwing down some of the removal in the deck to have him hit the graveyard.

Liliana Vess: Of the two Planeswalkers in the deck, I bet you didn’t think I’d be writing about this one. However, I really think Liliana is the All-Star of the two because her tutoring is invaluable and her ultimate is GROSS in multiplayer formats. Yes, you read that right, creatures in ALL graveyards. Damnation to Liliana ultimate???? Oh my…

Decree of Pain: Decree of Pain just reeks of utility. Hard-casted it’s a great card because not only does it sweep the board but it also gives you a huge advantage over your opponents in that you are replenishing your arsenal of cards through drawing after the deed is done. It’s also great against heavy control because you have an un-counterable -2/-2 global effect that snatches you up a card in the process. Praise Wizards for cycling.

Sengir Nosferatu: The last game I played with this deck, Tony (one of the Seattle area’s top judges and avid EDH player) made a bit of a mocking comment when I played the Sengir saying “well, that card was good in limited…”. This was before I threw Savra on the board, activated his bat ability, and started forcing everyone to sac their creatures while I didn’t lose any in the process. He is a one man machine. And a 4/4 flyer to boot. He is also incredibly hard to get rid of, it will usually take two or three opponents to actually do the deed.

Wishlist
Magic article authors can dream too right? These are cards that were simply out of my price range or just very hard to trade for:

Royal Assassin: Talk about board control. His rules text should read “Your opponent’s creatures can’t do anything that requires tapping.” You will hear a lot of groaning and sighing when this guy hits the table and all your opponents have to think about what they are going to do to deal with him. A very solid card.

Pernicious Deed: This one is a no-brainer. One of the greats in magic history.

Spirit Monger: A 6/6 for 5 mana with regenerate and the ability to get huge. GUH. Actually putting this on paper makes me realize I should just break down and buy him.

How the deck plays
Because of the curve, you’re going to always have fairly decent spells at each step of the game. The one problem with this deck is that it grabs a lot of attention from your opponents. Especially for [card title="Savra"]Savra, Queen of the Golgari[/card]. Her ability is something that your opponents fear and therefore gives them a reason to hate you out of the game. It may just be my play style, but I love to see the looks on their faces when I’m forcing them to sac creatures left and right. Perhaps this problem isn’t necessarily with the deck, maybe I just need to brush up on my playing tact. But either way, the cards in this deck definitely do not fly under the radar and that requires a bit of finesse and political savvy. This deck also gives you A LOT of play options. Deciding when and how to play different cards in this deck depending on the given board situation is something I’m still learning. Knowing when to sac over when to play, which ability to activate and if it’s the right time yet are all questions that come up frequently over the course of any given game. This is absolutely not a bad thing. In fact, it’s something that will make you a better magic player in the long run. If you’re running a deck with a lot of play options, it forces you to consider the game-state and visualize different plays and what their potential outcomes/consequences could potentially be.

So that’s the deck. Join me next week as I go over a few matches that I will play this week at my local draft. I’ll go over some of the pitfalls and stupid decisions I made along the way (I could probably write a few articles on that alone), as well as what threats the deck has problems dealing with. If you have an EDH deck you would like me to look at, test, or write about otherwise feel free to post on the forums and I’d be happy to give it a whirl!

Until then,
Trent

I need to pause as I introduce this episode to make sure you all know how great my video guy Darren is. This is the second week we’ve had inexplicable problems with rendering and an episode which should have taken us 2 hours to edit ended up taking us 7. This episode came out looking great with a single moment in the middle where we had about 3 seconds of technical problems in the video.

This episode features a budget style deck by Jason Liu, Lee and Trick break it down piece by piece, discussing card choices and if there are perhaps some better options. Take a look at the episode and see what you think!

No report this week (don’t worry, I’ll have one next week); rather, I present to you some speculative analysis. Sounds fun, right?

With Shadowmoor around the corner, and spoiler/preview season in full swing, speculation about the best post-rotation decks is once again a hot topic. And why not? After all, one card in a set can change the constructed metagame. Such was the case with the reprint of Dragonstorm in Time Spiral, as well as Bridge from Below in Future Sight and Doran, the Siege Tower in Lorwyn, just to name a few. This time around, the Johnnies have already gone crazy for one card in particular from Shadowmoor: Swans of Bryn Argoll.

It’s a solid card in itself, but what makes it more ridiculous is the deck archetype that comes with it, something I refer to as “Swan Song.” This red/green/white combo deck uses the aforementioned Swans of Bryn Argoll in conjunction with Seismic Assault and Dakmor Salvage. Yes, Dakmor Salvage, the lone Dredge card in Type 2. The combo can go off as early as turn 3 with the right hand and draws. Here’s what you need:
Turn 1: Karplusan Forest, Birds of Paradise.

Turn 2: Land that produces red, Seismic Assault.

Turn 3: Land that produces white, Swans of Bryn Argoll. With Dakmor Salvage in hand, discard it to Seismic to deal 2 damage to the Swans. Replace one of the draws by dredging Salvage. Repeat process until you have enough lands in hand to kill your opponent.

Swan Song’s Utility Belt

As if that weren’t enough, the deck has lots of protection and tutors to work its way around many potential stumbling blocks and disruptions. Because of its multicolor theme, I have a feeling there will be a revival in demand for Glittering Wish with the release of Shadowmoor. Not every deck would play it, but Swan Song certainly would. With it, you can grab Swans, Gaddock Teeg, Vexing Shusher (an uncounterable bear that can make other spells uncounterable), and Fulminator Mage (a 2/2 for 3 that sacrifices to destroy a nonbasic land), among other things.

Even without Glittering Wish, the deck has so much utility it’s not even funny. Manamorphose, a common instant from Shadowmoor, turns the two mana you spend to play it into two mana of any colors, and it cantrips! Sylvan Scrying allows you to get Dakmor Salvage if your draws aren’t kind. Idyllic Tutor can get Seismic Assault or Oblivion Ring for protection. And when you dredge Gaea’s Blessing with Dakmor Salvage, well, then it’s just “lather, rinse, repeat.”

The Problem With Speculation

Of course, because Shadowmoor hasn’t been released yet, because we don’t know every card in the set, and because we are still a month and a half away from the next Type 2 tournament of consequence with Shadowmoor, Pro Tour Hollywood, so many things about Swan Song are still up in the air. Initially some thought the deck needed as many as 39 lands in order to work. Others thought you needed much more acceleration, such as Rite of Flame or Simian Spirit Guide or Lotus Bloom. (Some were quick to remind those people that this is not a storm deck.) Like any deck in theory, it will take a lot of testing to see if it will stand up to the other prominent decks. What kind of success could it enjoy? Can it challenge Project R for top combo deck? Does it have answers for aggressive decks like faeries, Red Deck Wins, and kithkin? How will it deal with control? What else could come out of Shadowmoor that hoses or helps this deck? So much remains to be seen.

On top of that, while the list I propose for Swan Song is red/green/white, other lists use blue and black instead. Some may run green and white but no Glittering Wish. One list I’ve seen even worked in a Reveillark suite. Unlike many constructed archetypes, not one color combination or general list has been agreed upon just yet.

Burning Question: What Else Do You Expect?

In the meantime, feel free to discuss any other changes in the Constructed scene you see coming out of Shadowmoor. What cards and decks benefit the most from the theme, the new cards, the new mechanics? I’ll be checking in at the forums to see what you think.

-Sammy Time

Fixed: Sorry folks, had a glitch in the server, the download links are fixed now.

View the Decks to Beat

Discuss the Episode – Definitely check the discussion thread for an important deck we overlooked!

And come back next Monday for something very exciting!