With Worlds behind us, and an official confirmation that there are no bannings to the format that will be appearing before the start of the PTQ season, we now know everything there is to see about the format and can start working with the underpinnings of Extended in order to work out decks for the PTQ season. I’m pretty solid in my belief that for a static metagame such as Extended, where the decks are pretty solidly set in place due to their higher power levels, you have two choices: tweak, or attack. Unlike in Standard, where you can chase a deck concept to find a new and viable portion of the metagame just by toying around and tweaking whatever deck catches your fancy initially, the power curve for Extended is just higher and requires you to conform to the metagame either in your deck choice or deck design.
Conforming is hard. We just don’t like to do it. Building a new deck is harder, or at least it is when you want it to be any good at all. But looking at all of the tricksy Faerie decks, and trying to figure out what would compel anyone to play Death Cloud Rock in this format, I got to wondering whether there was any chance of making an aggressive Rock deck work. Tradition holds that it usually works, or at the very least someone will try it anyway, so my curiosity had me wondering: ‘fair’ Rock, good old Rock, can it exist? I just wanted to play something with aggressive Rock-like creatures and the right disruptive spells for the format, take advantage of the Engineered Explosives that are great against the big contenders of Zoo, Elves, and Faeries, fast creatures and some disruption… nothing beats Rock, right? Good old Rock.
Of course, even thinking this I had to think “this sounds like a terrible idea.” But lurking within the confines of Pro Tour: Berlin’s coverage, I discovered the following facts. First, that one non-Death Cloud, non-Life from the Loam Rock deck entered play on Day 1. Not necessarily surprising, random single copies of things show up all the time. Second, that said deck was still in play on Day 2. Curious… tell me more! I’m starting to think maybe I’m not completely off my rocker. Which is dangerous but still, I want to know more.
It finished eighteenth.
Marcio Carvalho — 18th at Pro Tour Berlin
2 Bloodstained Mire
2 Forest
2 Godless Shrine
2 Overgrown Tomb
1 Plains
3 Swamp
2 Temple Garden
3 Treetop Village
4 Windswept Heath
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Dark Confidant
4 Doran, the Siege Tower
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Tidehollow Sculler
2 Chrome Mox
2 Condemn
2 Putrefy
2 Smother
4 Thoughtseize
3 Umezawa’s Jitte
Sideboard
3 Bitterblossom
2 Engineered Explosives
4 Ethersworn Canonist
3 Kataki, War’s Wage
3 Loxodon Hierarch
This has a lot of the elements I’d hoped to see, but not all of them. Where are the Engineered Explosives? Doesn’t everyone need to lean hard on those in this format? Is Condemn any good at all? I guess it’s okay against All-In Red for their one big threat that has to attack, but it’s hardly relevant at all against Elves, or Faeries. I see hope, but I need more. We can rebuild her. We have the technology.
Starting from the bottom up, I wanted to look at the creatures in the deck. Some I liked; some were Birds of Paradise, or too many copies of Doran, that I didn’t. When I was thinking “I want to play Rock,” I found I was thinking of this obvious first bunch of creatures:
4 Dark Confidant
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Tidehollow Sculler
4 Kitchen Finks
We’re guaranteed to have an awesome two-drop, and Kitchen Finks is a solid beater that follows with all of my plans against removal-heavy decks and Zoo. Tidehollow Sculler does so much in Extended, and since our plan is to Sculler and Thoughtseize our opponent’s opening hand right out of the game, we’re aiming for that solid disruptive feel of a Rock deck even if we have to actually include at least enough White mana to play Tidehollow Sculler. We still need some more creatures, and I imagine we want a one-drop in here to boot, but I want it to be a one-drop that attacks, not some lazy one-drop that only makes mana… I’m already looking at Chrome Mox as the accelerant of choice, since it’s so critical here to jump right to two mana on turn 1 if possible.
“How far am I willing to stretch” is an obvious question to be asking, and that one-drop of choice would be awesome as Wild Nacatl if I want to set my manabase in such a way as to reliably produce the Black, Green and White mana I want to cast my spells, and still be able to have a fetchable token Mountain in order to pump Wild Nacatl. For turn 1 Nacatl, turn 2 Tidehollow Sculler, attacking for three on turn 2, I’ll need to have a turn one Green source that is also either a Swamp or a Plains, and a turn 2 dual land that gets the other two land types. Overgrown Tomb or Temple Garden on turn 1, plus Sacred Foundry or Blood Crypt on turn 2. I’d figured on wanting eight fetch-lands, one of each of the three requisite dual lands, and a good number of basics… I don’t have to take a lot of damage from my lands, so I don’t want to. That more or less eliminates the possibility of choosing Wild Nacatl as the one-drop, because it requires two dual lands on the first two turns, untapped, to do what I want to do anyway, and either massively interferes with my turn 2 play or operates at lower efficiency, making me wonder why I did all that work. The search for another one-drop continues.
Shadow Guildmage is worthy of consideration, and again asks us for Red mana to turn it on, but it does so in a different fashion… it asks for Red mana quickly, but not turn 1, so I can play eight Green Fetchlands, one Stomping Ground, and situationally maul Elves and Faeries with it to my heart’s content. Ultimately, though, it’s not what I’m looking for either, and I’m running out of options… I don’t want it to be White because I envision White as a minor color, there aren’t much in the way of aggressive one-drops in Black, and I’ve already said no to the most aggressive Green one-drop in the format. Which means ultimately I’m left accepting Carvalho’s choice of Birds of Paradise, dissenting only somewhat and choosing between Llanowar Elves and Elves of Deep Shadow, or skipping turn 1 entirely save for Chrome Mox or Thoughtseize, or perhaps Engineered Explosives for one. Since so far nothing besides Kitchen Finks requires double Green, if I can cast Llanowar Elf I definitely have my Green mana needs met, so I’ll pencil in Elves of Deep Shadow and see where we go from there. I don’t want Birds of Paradise because I want as many creatures able to wield a Jitte as possible, and an Elf will do this without relying on Doran like Birds of Paradise does.
A pair of Dorans wouldn’t be unwelcome either, but I might be as happy spending one more mana and getting Loxodon Hierarch; I want to be playing Mutavault in this deck as well, because really why wouldn’t I? I pencil in two Hierarchs and no copies of Doran, because Mutavault does not cast Doran and the color requirements are easier for the Hierarch. A bit less aggressive, sure, but at the top of my curve as a two-of, the expectation is that this will not actually cost me very much at all.
Creatures:
4 Elves of Deep Shadow
4 Dark Confidant
4 Tidehollow Sculler
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Kitchen Finks
2 Loxodon Hierarch
Now we need spells. Four each of Thoughtseize and Engineered Explosives seemed proper to me right off of the bat; 2-3 Jittes are likely to appear as well. With Engineered Explosives and Tidehollow Sculler in the line-up, getting an artifact in the graveyard for Tarmogoyf should be pretty common, and with fetch-lands ubiquitous in the format (and eight copies in my own deck) a land in the graveyard should also be more-or-less an automatic.
That leaves the other card types, and Sorcery is already reasonably covered, but if we can fill in a few more then that’s fine; Instant is desirable, and likely to appear anyway with Smother and Putrefy next on our list. Enchantment seems reasonable but not desirable; we don’t have Seal of Fire, we could have Oblivion Ring, but picking the Ring because it is an enchantment and might end up in the graveyard seems silly. Planeswalker would require us choosing to use Garruk, which is a “maybe” in the sideboard against other Rock-style decks but otherwise not something I’m interested in, and Tribal requires us to choose to use Bitterblossom, Eyeblight’s Ending, or Nameless Inversion. Bitterblossom’s almost certainly going to appear in our sideboard, much like it does in Marcio Carvalho’s deck, though probably as a four-of; Nameless Inversion is great for killing most creatures, and has the advantage over Smother of killing a Sower of Temptation, but is miserable at killing Tarmogoyf and that is not something I want to glaze over. Eyeblight’s Ending is likewise interesting, since it serves much the same role as Putrefy, but gives you +1/+1 to all Tarmogoyfs for being Tribal. It also never kills Vedalken Shackles, Umezawa’s Jitte, or basically any creature in the Elf deck, so Putrefy it is.
4 Thoughtseize
4 Engineered Explosives
4 Smother
2 Putrefy
2 Umezawa’s Jitte
Putting all of these things together, we have 38 cards when I really want to fit in more than 22 mana sources; I don’t want to cut a Smother or Explosives to ‘tweak’ down to three-of’s, and so the Loxodon Hierarchs go the way of the dodo and exit the deck. The question, then, is 23 or 24 mana sources, knowing that I want four copies of Chrome Mox but will loathe any hand in which I draw two copies because I’ll never play the second one. Marcio played 23 mana sources, but since I am going to opt on having Mutavaults in my deck as a four-of I think I can afford to go with 24.
Building the manabase, we see the following:
4 Mutavault
4 Windswept Heath
4 Bloodstained Mire
4 Chrome Mox
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Godless Shrine
1 Temple Garden
1 Stomping Ground
2 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Plains
Without assuming that we’ll get White from a Chrome Mox (you can imprint Kitchen Finks, after all, but not Tidehollow Sculler), this manabase provides us with the following mana:
Green: 17 / 24 tap for Green (Mox must imprint a Green card).
Black: 15 / 24 tap for Black (Mox must imprint a Black card).
White: 11 / 24 tap for White (Mox basically cannot imprint a White card).
Red: 9 / 24 tap for Red (main-deck, it’s a “fourth color” for Engineered Explosives).
Our mana needs, however, are thus:
Any: 4 Engineered Explosives, 2 Umezawa’s Jitte
Green, only: 4 Elves of Deep Shadow, 4 Tarmogoyf, 4 Kitchen Finks
Black, only: 4 Dark Confidant, 4 Thoughtseize, 4 Smother
White, only: None.
Red, only: None.
Black/Green: 2 Putrefy
White/Green: None. (4 Kitchen Finks, since you can cast them with a White instead of a Green for the second colored mana, so Godless Shrine contributes as an eighteenth “Green source” for the second Green mana.)
Black/White: 4 Tidehollow Sculler
With two fetch-lands we can cast any spells in our deck so long as we get a third mana for Kitchen Finks; with only one fetch-land but it being the right fetch-land opposite our other colored land or Mox, we can more or less do the same. There’s plenty of options for us to work with, our colored requirements are light and we’re happily using a very lightly painful mana-base; we don’t rely on the Ravnica duals.
Put it all together and we have the following main-deck:
4 Elves of Deep Shadow
4 Dark Confidant
4 Tidehollow Sculler
4 Tarmogoyf
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Engineered Explosives
4 Chrome Mox
2 Umezawa’s Jitte
4 Mutavault
4 Windswept Heath
4 Bloodstained Mire
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Godless Shrine
1 Temple Garden
1 Stomping Ground
2 Forest
1 Swamp
1 Plains
Our Tarmogoyfs can pretty reliably be 5/6: a fetchland, some artifact, a creature dying either on their side or on ours, either our Thoughtseize or their own sorcery, and an Instant on either our side or theirs. We have solid disruption and aggressive drops, enough mana acceleration to keep up and the intent to use Engineered Explosives to make sure our creatures beat theirs by settling on the right number, whatever that happens to be between one and four.
That Stomping Ground seems a little suspect, it’s true, but it gives us options if we want it, can terrify an Affinity player into thinking we have Ancient Grudge, or better yet perhaps, actually let us play Ancient Grudge. With only nine sources for that one Red, I don’t want to rely on it, but I do want that one Red mana to be available, and I’m certain that I want it to be Red and not Blue if for no other reason than that it threatens Ancient Grudge.
Our divergence from Marcio’s list, so far, is:
Lands:
+2 Fetchlands, -2 basic Swamps
+4 Mutavault, -3 Treetop Village, -1 Spell
-1 each of three Ravnica Block dual lands; +2 Chrome Mox, +1 Stomping Ground.
Spells:
-4 Birds of Paradise, +4 Elves of Deep Shadow
-4 Doran, the Siege Tower, +4 Engineered Explosives
-2 Condemn, +2 Smother
-1 Umezawa’s Jitte, +1 Land
The change to Mutavault over Treetop Village is small but noteworthy; I felt the colored mana needs weren’t high enough to require Treetops, which are also slower with that annoying comes-into-play-tapped thing, and Mutavaults are cheaper to send on the attack anyway: even if they hit for less, they’ll likely start hitting harder, earlier, especially in multiples.
Worth noting when I aim to test this deck, finally, putting it through the wringer for another look at it next week, is that there are only 26 spells to imprint on a Chrome Mox, since it says “non-Artifact”… it can’t imprint Jitte, Sculler, or Explosives. You can argue “why would you want to,” but it’s worth noting that it’s not the most reliable of mana sources, so in addition to never wanting to draw two, I want to note that it’s distinctly possible it should be moved down to a three-of rather than its current four-of, to remind myself to watch for exactly that as I test the deck, to actively see how the Chrome Moxes feel, it I have too many of them.
Next, then, we want to look at the sideboard. Marcio’s was:
3 Bitterblossom
2 Engineered Explosives
4 Ethersworn Canonist
3 Kataki, War’s Wage
3 Loxodon Hierarch
Right off the bat I can tell you that Ethersworn Canonist will not be making our sideboard; its usefulness against Elves has steadily and rapidly decreased even over the length of the Pro Tour in which it was aimed against the Elves, who will just merrily squat on it with their Viridian Shamans and move on. Engineered Explosives, we don’t need to have in our sideboard, all four of our copies are in the main-deck, and I don’t even feel Kataki is warranted: in the occasion of playing against Affinity we’d be just as happy using a different card that had more uses in other matchups anyway, which I see as distinctly possible since I want both Pithing Needle and Krosan Grip in the sideboard. I want more things that interact with my opponent’s cards, and I want to be able to absolutely get a Vedalken Shackles off the board so the Naturalize of choice is the split-second Grip. Pithing Needle can name Arcbound Ravager, Blinkmoth Nexus, Atog, or Cranial Plating with equal aplomb, and set in alongside our Explosives and Smothers and Putrefies will readily negate opposing threats. We want a minimum of four things to bring in against Affinity, because they deploy their hand so quickly that Thoughtseize is a waste to keep in after sideboarding, and I’d already envisioned a minimum of two Pithing Needles and three Krosan Grips so we’re good to go so far.
Sideboard:
4 Bitterblossom
4 Loxodon Hierarch
3 Krosan Grip
2 Pithing Needle
1 Umezawa’s Jitte
1 Selesnya Sanctuary
This allows for some interesting manipulation to the deck, as I’m choosing many of the same tools to bring in against a variety of different decks instead of hyper-specific bombs to attempt to hose individual archetypes. Against Zoo, I want to be able to take out that pesky fourth Chrome Mox and maybe have a little help getting to Loxodon Hierarch mana, because they’re probably not going to suffer an Elf to live, so that one-of Selesnya Sanctuary helps us get where we want to go. That Sanctuary also has a reasonable shot at going in against decks that want to go long against us, like Blue control or Death Cloud Rock, though it could be a liability against Venser… thankfully Venser isn’t appearing in a lot of lists, and so far never as more than a two-of right now.
The third Jitte seems obvious, and is good against creature decks like Zoo and Elves, so we’re really just tuning ourselves against them a little better to be able to try for blowout games a little more easily, or maybe even just having a Seal of Legend Rule Your Jitte, because we can expect to fight Jitte-wars against them after sideboarding. After that, we start hitting the versatile tools department.
Bitterblossom is good for fighting other Bitterblossom decks, is overall a great threat against Blue control decks, and solid against Death Cloud-style decks as well since it provides a steady supply of beaters that don’t really care about mass removal, not even Death Cloud, that can nullify a Planeswalker like Garruk readily. It’s an excellent “Rock Mirror” type of card, and strong against Blue control as well, especially given the deck’s use of Chrome Mox as a four-of to enable it turn 1 on the play before any response is even possible. (Or at least not until Commandeer or Disrupting Shoal start seeing play.)
Loxodon Hierarch is best for when you need to “out-fattie” the opposing creature deck, and this is awesome against Zoo since it provides a huge body and an immediate gain of four life right off the bat. If anyone actually plays the burn deck, it’s presumably solid there too, though you sideboarding Hierarchs and them sideboarding Sulfuric Vortex can lead to them laughing a little at you, so consider your Grips when playing against Red burn, because you have to play against their sideboard, too.
Pithing Needle is awesome for shutting down those really annoying synergistic tricks, like Riptide Laboratory or Vedalken Shackles, but also has a wide variety of useful applications on the side as well. It shuts down any Planeswalker for one mana, has a variety of good uses against Affinity, and generally does good things where you least expect it to all over the metagame. Krosan Grip answers any artifact or enchantment threat in uncounterable fashion, great against those Blue control decks with Shackles and such, but also solid against Affinity, again, and a definite role-player against Red decks which will either want to play Blood Moon to take you out of the match or play Sulfuric Vortex and, well, take you out of the match. Even a turn 1 Blood Moon for them on the play might not be good enough, since just one Chrome Mox is enough Green mana to destroy Blood Moon.
I’m pretty enthusiastic with where the deck ended up; I had a definite vision for the cards I wanted to play, and didn’t even realize that the archetype I’d somehow chosen for myself just happened to accidentally do well at Pro Tour: Elves-Versus-Zoo. While I’ve made changes to Marcio’s eighteenth-place Rock deck, ultimately I’ve been happy with those changes in light of the metagame, such as going back and putting all those copies of Engineered Explosives into the main-deck instead of deciding they wouldn’t be necessary. Next up on Magical Hack: testing the deck against the metagame as a whole, to see where things develop… good old Rock, nothing beats Rock!
Sean McKeown
s_mckeown @ hotmail.com