We only have one reporting PTQ from Extended 2007 Week Two, the event from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Here is what the Top 8 looked like:
| Deck&ntsb; &ntsb; &ntsb; | &ntsb; | |||
| TEPS | * | |||
| The CAL | 1 | |||
| JunkFires | 1 | |||
| Toolbox Junk | 1 | |||
| U/G Opposition | 1 | |||
| U/W Post | 1 | 1 | ||
| U/W Tron | 1 |
If you’re scratching your head over some of these decks and deck names, it’s because I made most of them up when looking at the Oklahoma Top 8 (I’m more than willing to be corrected by the interested parties, especially for when I port the information back over to the Mothership next week); don’t worry, though; I’ll go over everything.
The first two decks I want to go over are Alison Hill’s fifth place JunkFires, and Aaron Hendrickson’s eighth place Toolbox Junk.
Creatures (22)
Lands (18)
Spells (20)
Sideboard
At first glace, Alison’s deck is a straightforward PT Junk deck out of the tradition of Osyp Lebedowicz, and especially Gerard Fabiano, in their early days as gravy trainers. Alison’s creature selection is spot on, with hits at essentially every curve point: Wild Mongrel and Vinelasher Kudzu on two (check out those ten Onslaught duals!); Troll Ascetic, Call of the Herd, and (the underplayed) Anurid Brushhopper on three… so those Angers kind of stick out like I don’t know what. They are why I dubbed this deck JunkFires: It’s essentially PT Junk, but has the odd, yet deliberate, “must give my guys haste” element, you know, like a Fires of Yavimaya deck.
I’m always a bit suspicious about 4 Duress / 3 Cabal Therapy decks, because they are almost expressly inferior in creature decks to 4 Cabal Therapy / 3 Duress, and when they appear in the configuration Alison played, there is usually a reason you would want the generally superior one. Eric Taylor once showed me a Szleifer-style Reanimator deck with 4 Duress and 3 Cabal Therapy, explaining that the pilot was not good on the reading, not realizing the importance of hacking one’s own hand in a Reanimator strategy. Alison only has seven Anger outlets… self-directed Therapy is actually reasonable a fair amount of the time.
I’m guessing that the three cards missing from the sideboard — listed on MagictheGathering.com as Sudden Deaths three through five — are actually Sudden Shocks. Sudden Shock also gives this deck a nice out to Psychatog… But you probably didn’t need me to remind you of that.
Creatures (14)
Lands (18)
Spells (28)
They certainly love their eighteen-land Junk decks in Oklahoma!
Here is a deck more out of the straight G/W Junk tradition; you know, the kinds of decks Jon Becker keeps getting tricked into playing. Aaron has an array of awesome splashes, though. Even if he doesn’t run the typical Black disruption, Fire / Ice and several Red and Blue sideboard bullets like Avalanche Riders, Flametongue Kavu, and Meddling Mage give his deck a great deal of additional flexibility.
Harmonic Sliver is a really cool, and somewhat underplayed, card. I keep playing Viridian Shaman in my G/W decks, and Brian Kowal keeps asking me why I don’t have Harmonic Sliver, which is an inferior body (but you don’t play these cards for their bodies so much as utility).
I think a good deal of why I like this deck has to do with its varied ability to beat fair decks. Trolls, Calls, Cloaks, Swords, Hierarchs, and Incarnations are all insane against, say, Boros… but the deck seems to have big holes in the big mana matchups. Saving one Avalanche Riders, I don’t see Toolbox Junk as having a tremendous chance against U/W Post, U/W ‘Tron, TrinketPost, or Tooth. Trust me, I’m an expert at not having an out to an Urza’s Tower in Extended.
Creatures (3)
Lands (21)
Spells (36)
- 4 Counterspell
- 3 Decree of Justice
- 3 Vedalken Shackles
- 4 Thirst for Knowledge
- 3 Mindslaver
- 4 Condescend
- 4 Talisman of Progress
- 3 Fact or Fiction
- 2 Chrome Mox
- 4 Repeal
- 2 Spell Burst
Sideboard
Creatures (3)
Lands (21)
Spells (36)
- 4 Counterspell
- 3 Decree of Justice
- 3 Vedalken Shackles
- 4 Thirst for Knowledge
- 3 Mindslaver
- 4 Condescend
- 4 Talisman of Progress
- 3 Fact or Fiction
- 2 Chrome Mox
- 4 Repeal
- 2 Spell Burst
Sideboard
The U/W Post decks in Oklahoma are an interesting twist on the known archetype. Rather than being more split down the middle, these are essentially Blue Control decks with Vedalken Shackles, borrowing an artifact / mana sub-theme. The White is really only there for Decree of Justice. I would have to test this against the aggressive decks in the format, but this deck seems like it should have some potential. Chrome Mox gives it a fair bit of the speed that is needed against Boros, and Vedalken Shackles and Repeal main are relevant resistance. Like most big mana Extended decks, U/W Post can go to infinite Mindslavers with Academy Ruins in a long game.
Creatures (27)
- 4 Llanowar Elves
- 4 Birds of Paradise
- 4 Wirewood Symbiote
- 4 Wood Elves
- 2 Eternal Witness
- 4 Coiling Oracle
- 2 Scryb Ranger
- 3 Spectral Force
Lands (20)
Spells (13)
Sideboard
This deck is just maximum excitement.
Wirewood Symbiote plus Coiling Oracle (for a minute I thought Eternal Witness might be some sort of Elf)? Beacon of Creation plus Opposition? I just wish I could claim credit for this deck.
You might not see it because you are used to Sakura-Tribe Elder and Kodama’s Reach in Beacon decks, but Coiling Oracle and Wood Elves can cheat for quite a few Forests, especially with Wirewood Symbiote and Scryb Ranger cheating the math with the conventional one-mana boosters.
Carl has completely ignored the conventional token generation mechanisms here, and I love a deck that kills its darlings. If I’m going to play roughly 999 untap effects, why not just play Spectral Force? In this deck, Spectral Force not only doesn’t have much of an appreciable downside, its presence is probably helping to net card economy.
I try a U/G Opposition deck roughly once per year (go back two or three weeks for my own U/G starting points this season); U/G decks of this school tend to have some holes, particularly being burned out or being unable to deal with problem permanents. The Opposition shogun Satoshi Nakamura thought up four main deck copies of Sword of Fire and Ice (one of that card’s first appearances on the big stage); Carl has Jitte here. Like I said, I’d like to see more out of this deck (and I wish I could say I thought it up) but even in the abstract, there seems to be a fine top-down design holding it together.
One of the cool things about talking about a small PTQ with so much local flavor is that we actually get the chance to talk about new and different and possibly viable decks… But the cynic in me says that, in a room full of home brews, of course the lone TEPS in the Top 8 took the Blue Envelope.
Lands (16)
Spells (44)
Ryan left this note on the Top8Magic boards after his win (I’m cleaning it up so that it can appear on the much more shiny and edited StarCityGames.com front page):
After listening to the podcast, it sounded like TEPS was even better then I thought it was… I started playing it on Wednesday to the tune of a 1-2 City Champs drop, but on that Saturday I won the Oklahoma City PTQ. Cycling Top for Top eight times is tech when you follow it with Tendrils… Thanks Top8Magic for the excellent podcasts that continue to help your listeners… By the way, thanks BDM for the Japanese Finals stuff, as that’s where I got the TEPS list from.
TEPS hasn’t actually won any Top8Magic mock tournaments yet, but you know me, I’ll take whatever credit you want to give me!
With Fort Worth, Texas reporting Mark Dean as a winner with Levy-style TEPS, the unofficial tally is currently:
| Deck&ntsb; &ntsb; &ntsb; | &ntsb; | |||
| TEPS | 1 | 1 | ||
| G/W Haterator | 1 | |||
| Aggro Loam | 1 | |||
| NO Stick | 1 |
Plan accordingly.
Tonight is our third mock tournament of the season (I am writing this on a Thursday). I am either playing my U/G deck again, which was repaired by Chad Kastel, or The Rock. Chad, I think, is playing the U/G, and it would probably not be very statistically valid to have two copies of a deck even more rogue than G/W Haterator in a tournament of 20-30 players at this stage. So… The Rock? Recently I have found that I might be losing myself. I mentioned this to my wife, but she brushed me off like so much dandruff.
“Don’t you understand? My play list is nothing but the Strokes and the Killers! There isn’t a vagina between the two bands!”
“There’s more to life than what music you listen to,” she said.
Damn you, Josh Ravitz!
Applied to Magic: I hate The Rock, right?
Well…
Personally, I’ve only ever played it in three tournaments, and my performances were:
Win and byes.
8-2.
Win and qualify.
In more recent years, I have been perusing the Top 8 lists of PTQs asking myself two questions:
1) Why is he playing that / Didn’t he get the memo?
2) How come that idiot just won / Doesn’t The Rock suck?
I have revised these questions into a new mantra: “I could be that idiot.”
Flow Rock? No. That never beats G/W.
Gifts Rock? No. I am playing The Rock; why would I want to play something powerful like Gifts Ungiven?
Macey Rock? I love a Bill, but No. Just The Rock. I even have Wall of Roots and two Scrabbling Claws… and four Spiritmongers. It’s like Know Your Role all over again.
LOVE
MIKE