Selecting 10th Edition: Empyrial Plate!

Thanks for clicking that link. Today’s article would be a Selecting 10th Edition article, but there’s nothing to argue: Loxodon Warhammer is more popular, more universally loved, less restrictive, and more elephantine than Empyrial Plate. There’s no way Empyrial Plate is winning this vote. Seriously!

That’s fine. I can see that you’re not going to let me off the hook that easily. Okay, here’s ten reasons why Loxodon Warhammer is better than Empyrial Plate

I said so.
We have sold four times as many Mirrodin Loxodon Warhammers as Empyrial Plates here at StarCityGames.com.
Eighteen decks in our deck database contain Loxodon Warhammer. Zero decks contain Empyrial Plate.
Who cares? Does anyone genuinely believe Empyrial Plate stands a chance?
Sure, you might want the Plate to win (hi Bennie Smith!), but you can’t realistically think it can be the victor.

Yan can count to four.

Psychatog in Standard Contest!

As part of my last daily run, I ran a contest. The challenge: See who could build the best deck if Psychatog were Standard legal. There were over 100 posts on the thread, with over 90 decks submitted! I would definitely run another contest like this again in the future. Everyone seemed really stoked about the theoretical Psychatog deck, and there were a ton of good entries. Spirits ran high, discussion was made… it was a party.

The Tog decks fell into many camps, the most common being Dredge engines, Gifts Ungiven engines, Wildfire engines, and Owling Mine engines. Some decks combined multiples of these engines. Other builds included Hellbent cards (since Psychatog can instantly get your hand down to nil), Greater Good (to fill your hand and graveyard), and Stalking Vengeance (as a Fling-type effect in Standard).

Here were some of the innovations I found particular interesting.

Lobster411 combined Psychatog with Crypt Champion as a way to get back everyone’s favorite toothy beater. There are many ways to kill Psychatog in Standard (Moritfy, Putrefy, Condemn), and Crypt Champion is an efficient way to get Psychatog back into play once it dies – or to reanimate a creature discarded by Psychatog’s ability.
Many players included Glimpse the Unthinkable and Traumatize in their builds. Neither of these cards seems that great to me. Golgari Grave-Troll and Stinkweed Imp do a fine job of getting cards into your graveyard, and function as creatures to boot.
Psychotic Fury acts like Berserk, but as a cantrip. The only thing it doesn’t do is give Psychatog trample.
There is no objectively best build, but there are certain cards that seem key to the deck, depending on which version of the deck you build. These include Golgari Thug (to recur the Tog as many times as it dies), Nightmare Void (against control), Demonfire (as a finisher if you’re running Red), and Dark Confidant (as a way to draw cards cheaply).

With that said, let me present the finalists for each build of the deck. At the end, I’ll announce the winner. Finalists are listed in the order that they appeared on the original thread for my contest.

Finalist #1: Lobster411 – B/U/R/G Tog (Crypt Champion Build)

Mychatog.dec

Lobster411

Test deck on 07-09-2006

Casual

Creatures (23)

Creatures (9)

Lands (24)

Spells (27)

Sideboard

The winner, as chosen by me? It was a tough one, as each of these decks takes a different approach to beating with Tog. In the end, it came down to the amount of effort that was put into the deck, and so the winner of this contest is Zafri106 for his Owling Tog build. Zafri not only built his deck, but playtested it against a number of other decks in Standard, modifying his deck several times based on playtest results.

Congratulations Zafri106! Send me a private message on the boards with your real name, address, and telephone number, and you’ll be getting those four shiny Psychatogs in the mail within the next week!

Thank you again to everyone that entered. Until next week, this is “Loxodon Warhammer is going to win,” signing off!

PS: Why did nobody pair Psychatog with Loxodon Warhammer? Trample seems good on the Tog…