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10 Extended Decks in 10 Days – Life Would Be a Dream?

Chad continues our Extended event today with what many have termed “the wimpiest combo deck of all time.” Is this a fair assessment of a deck that simply blows most aggro decks out of the water, or is this something you absolutely must prepare for in order to be ready for Grand Prix: Boston this weekend? Leave it to the guy from Your Move Games to help you figure it out!

Most Magic decks win by reducing an opponent’s life from twenty to zero. Many of the best decks are well-tuned to deal exactly twenty points of damage, and while they can certainly do more – much more – if not being impeded, they cannot do twenty thousand points of damage.


Or twenty million.


Or twenty billion-billion-billion-billion-gazillion plus four.


Welcome to Life – a combo deck that doesn’t kill you when it goes off, but does dare you to deal a rather large amount of damage. Life made its latest debut at Pro Tour: Columbus, where it made the Top 8 before falling to another relatively new deck, Scepter-Chant.


Ryuichi Arita

7th – Life


4 City of Brass

2 Forest

6 Plains

4 Brushland

3 Starlit Sanctum

4 Windswept Heath

1 Academy Rector


1 Eternal Witness

3 Daru Spiritualist

4 Task Force

4 Shaman en-Kor

3 Nomads en-Kor


4 Eladamri’s Call

1 Test of Endurance

1 Animal Boneyard

1 Parallax Wave

1 Seal of Cleansing

1 Rule of Law

4 Worthy Cause

4 Living Wish

3 Enlightened Tutor

1 Sterling Grove


Sideboard

4 Orim’s Chant

1 Daru Spiritualist

1 Eternal Witness

1 Nomads en-Kor

1 Starlit Sanctum

1 Academy Rector

1 Seal of Cleansing

1 Energy Flux

1 Ensnaring Bridge

1 Engineered Plague

1 Genesis

1 Isochron Scepter


The combo has been discussed at such length that I think everyone knows it by now, so I’ll be brief. You have two different creatures that gain toughness whenever they are targeted: Daru Spiritualist and Task Force. You have two different creatures that can target them an unbounded number of times: Shaman en-Kor and Nomads en-Kor. Thus, with one of each group in play you have a creature that is as tough as you want. His reward for such toughness is to be sacrificed to Worthy Cause, Animal Boneyard or (if it’s a Spiritualist) Starlit Sanctum, leaving you with a lift total that few beatdown decks can dream of whittling down to zero.


Once the life combo has gone off, the deck wins either by resolving Test of Endurance (and keeping it in play until upkeep) or by using Living Wish to get Serra Avatar. The Avatar can swing for rather a large amount of damage, or against an opponent who has rendered the combat phase inoperable, it can simply become the eighth card in hand to be discarded (and returned to the library) until the opponent runs out of cards.


Despite having multiple copies of cards that can fill its combo requirements, three-card combinations are always tough to pull together reliably. Fortunately Life has a lot of search. Living Wish can fetch any part of the combo – the fourth Spiritualist, Nomads and Starlit Sanctum are in the sideboard for just this purpose. Eladamri’s Call can fetch whichever creature is missing. And Academy Rector or Enlightened Tutor can fetch either Boneyard for the sacrifice or Test of Endurance to end the game.


Before going into the strengths, weaknesses and matchup analysis of the deck, I should point out that I’m not testing off of Arita’s list. Instead, I’ll be using the following list, which I think dramatically improves the deck by adding Aether Vial:


Phil Johnson

Neutral Ground “Time Walk Tournament” Finalist – Life


6 Plains

4 City of Brass

4 Windswept Heath

4 Brushland

3 Starlit Sanctum

2 Forest


4 Task Force

4 Shaman en-Kor

3 Daru Spiritualist

3 Nomads en-Kor

1 Academy Rector


1 Eternal Witness

4 Worthy Cause

4 Aether Vial

4 Living Wish

4 Eladamri’s Call

2 Enlightened Tutor

1 Test of Endurance

1 Animal Boneyard

1 Seal of Cleansing


Sideboard

4 Disenchant

1 Parallax Wave

1 Serenity

1 Rule of Law

1 Serra Avatar

1 Genesis

1 Thornscape Familiar

1 Daru Spiritualist

1 Nomads en-Kor

1 Academy Rector

1 Eternal Witness

1 Starlit Sanctum


In order to run the Vials, Johnson gave up an Enlightened Tutor and three targets: Rule of Law, Parallax Wave and Sterling Grove (which, of course, can also function as an Enlightened Tutor). As we shall see, I think the tradeoff is quite favorable, and helps the deck win its toughest matchups.


The Good:

Redundancy and resilience. Combo decks are often vulnerable to disruption, but with its ability to tutor for missing parts (even out of its sideboard or graveyard), Life is hard to disrupt.


Speed. With all its redundancy, Life will sometimes win without much tutoring. And with Aether Vial, it can tutor twice and still go off on turn three:


Turn 1: Vial.

Turn 2: Call/Wish, put Nomads into play with Vial.

Turn 3: Call/Wish, put Spiritualist into play with Vial, Worthy Cause.


The combo is useful on its own. Combo has always been the enemy of beatdown because it’s usually a turn faster and the two decktypes often don’t interact, but Life does interact with beatdown decks, and in a way they don’t like. Put a Task Force and en-Kor on the table and it’s very hard for Red Deck Wins to do anything at all with the attack phase. Cephalid Breakfast or Dancing Ghoul can go off all they want if you’ve got an infinite-toughness blocker to hog all the trample damage to itself. Even Jamie Wakefield will have to admit that The Best Fattie Ever Printed is going to take a bunch of turns to amass enough dinosaur tokens to make it worth attacking. Turns he won’t have.


(Okay, Jamie would probably point out that after just a few turns he could launch a winning attack with Overrun. Like I said, turns he won’t have.)


The Bad:

When you win, you don’t really win. This doesn’t matter against a beatdown deck, but matters a lot against decks that can find an alternate victory path, notably control and combo. The Rock may need to cast Cranial Extraction multiple times (first taking Test of Endurance, then Living Wish and finally – if you’ve already Wished for your Avatar – Serra Avatar), but that’s easy enough for them to do. A combo deck like Aluren will simply go off bigger than you did – since you have to name a finite number even if you create an infinite combo, anyone else dealing an infinite amount of damage/life loss just names a bigger number. Your Test of Endurance isn’t easy to force through a control deck, since even if you get it into play it may not live until your next upkeep. And while Serra Avatar will eventually get through permission (assuming you were able to Wish for her), there are plenty of decks that can ignore a non-trampling fattie no matter how big she is.


You have very little disruption of your own. Arita’s one Rule of Law shouldn’t be enough to stop a Desire deck from going off, and one Seal of Cleansing isn’t going to trouble most decks built around artifacts or enchantments. Like most combo decks, you’re only really good at doing your one thing and then hoping that thing is good enough. The one exception to this is Serenity, a card that may well be worth maindecking in place of Seal of Cleansing, since it is so devastating against Affinity.


The Ugly:

Negative Billions, Billions!

You’re no longer a rogue deck. Arita knew that many decks wouldn’t be prepared for him. That means misplays and ineffective sideboards. No longer. Most decks are now asking the question, “What do I do against Life?” and they are finding answers. Red decks will be packing Sulfuric Vortex for their worst nightmare, and they and other decks are likely to consider Cursed Totem as well. Black decks may start packing False Cure (I hear rumors there’s even a control deck out there that uses Beacon of Immortality to stay alive and eventually kills with it and False Cure…). This means that Life decks will have to sideboard answers without necessarily knowing what questions are going to be asked.


(I had a dream last night in which my B/R Goblins deck sideboarded in Backlash against a Life deck that had resolved Serra Avatar. OK, that’s horrible, and so is Threaten {which can be Wished for but which would presumably just earn a block}, but you get the idea.) And now that the three best combo decks in Extended (Life, Desire and Cephalid Breakfast) all involve playing weenies, spot removal will be on the rise.


Many of your good matchups are REALLY good, but many of your bad matchups are REALLY bad. This is something of a matter of taste. All decks have good and bad matchups, but I prefer decks that have game against anything. Knowing if your opponent leads with Llanowar Wastes and Birds of Paradise you’re probably going to lose even with perfect play is okay for some if they also get to know that they can smash Mountain/Pup with high consistency.


When you gain massive life but can’t resolve or keep Test of Endurance, your opponent is the only one likely to know whether the game is yours, his or a draw. Imagine you’re playing against a rogue U/G control deck (like, say, the one I’m currently testing because I can’t follow my own advice and stick to the known best decks). You pull off infinite life while all I’m able to do is draw a bunch of cards and get ahead of you in mana. You’re too smart to walk into permission, so you Vial out a Rector and sacrifice it, getting Test of Endurance, but I Naturalize it and then play Eternal Witness, getting back Naturalize. You know I’ve got infinite Witness, so there’s no way you’re going to win by Test or Avatar beatdown – you’re going to have to deck me. Can you?


Well, we play through our decks, and most of the round, and as my library dwindles I finally Cunning Wish for Krosan Reclamation. Now my infinite Witnesses mean I can keep my library from running out, so you can’t deck me. Can I deck you?


Can I?


You might go off on turn 3 or 4 and still be hopelessly losing…and against some decks you won’t know either way. Meanwhile, I just keep playing. If I can deck you, I’m certainly in no hurry to show you how. Maybe all I have is a way to keep myself from losing and I’m playing for a draw? Or maybe we’re going to keep from decking ourselves until they call time and then I’m going to show you why your Serra Avatar can’t save you.


Matchup analysis:


RDW: Happy times. Your creatures shine against them, with Daru Spiritualist hard to kill unless they run Volcanic Hammer and Task Force almost impossible for them to kill under any circumstances. With that in mind, your best Spiritualist play (if possible) is to play a Spiritualist and an en-Kor in the same turn so they don’t have a Volcanic window. Aether Vial allows you to play out a Spiritualist (or en-Kor) and then pop out “the lock” if they try to kill it. More importantly, it makes you much less likely to lose a game to Rishadan Port/Wasteland/Tangle Wire disruption.


Goblins: Very good, although not quite as good as the press would have you believe, particularly if they are also running Aether Vial (and especially if you aren’t running Aether Vial). The problem is twofold: Sparksmith and Gempalm Incinerator can sometimes actually kill your Spiritualist/Task Force (assuming you don’t have the full lock in play), or they can just come out fast enough that you have to chump Goblin Piledriver. Basically Goblins needs to buy about a turn in order to kill you, and they can manage that often enough (either with “Visara for two mana” or after boarding with something you have to Disenchant) that the match isn’t always easy.


Madness: Aggro-control should be good vs. combo, but here it’s not so simple. U/G doesn’t have a ton of permission and has very little else to disrupt the combo. If you get out the creature set they also need Wonder to get past your blockers. Unless they get off to an absolutely explosive start you should probably play around Daze, knowing that Circular Logic alone isn’t enough to handle your redundancy and of course Aether Vial lets you go off quickly and counter-resistant.


Affinity: Pierre Canali said it best himself, “I don’t think I could have gotten better matchups – the Life deck being the deck [in the Top 8 of PT: Columbus] I definitely didn’t want to face…”. Neither side has much main-deck disruption to offer, so we have an old-fashioned race with Life having two advantages: blocking and speed. The game plan isn’t subtle: go all-in and try to gain infinite life before losing twenty. I think Life is a half-turn faster than Affinity, but Affinity has an easier time handling the infinite-butt blockers with modular tricks and some flyers, so “the team” won’t always slow them as much as it will against Goblins or RDW. After boarding, however, you have Serenity – a two-mana one-sided semi-Jokulhaups that you can Enlightened Tutor for. Do so and just run it out there on turn 2. If they go all-in, it should wreck them, and if they hold back waiting for it to go off, it’s bought you all the time you should need.


The Rock: Welcome to the bad news. Almost any build of the Rock is going to give you a hard time. The Rock is a classic example of the deck that doesn’t really care if you “go off” because they can and will Cranial Extract you over and over again, and Serra Avatar isn’t going to hassle them even if you manage to Wish for it and reach seven mana before they Extract your remaining Wishes and the Avatar herself. Your only realistic way to win is to go off, get Test of Endurance into play and not have it Naturalized or Deeded away before your upkeep. That won’t be easy. Fortunately, the Rock seems to be a poor choice in the current Extended format.


A sad caution on the Rock matchup for the optimists out there. I’ve seen various people in the forums (here and on other sites) arguing for various ways to resist the Extraction lock over the long term. It just isn’t there. Once the Rock has gotten rid of your ways to win, they can remove every single spell in your deck. The method is slow but simple – use Witnesses to recycle the Extractions, then Deed away the Witnesses, then use Volrath’s Stronghold to draw them again. Each cycle gets you three Extractions and a Deed, so whether your plan involves Genesis or Avatar or your own Stronghold or any other spell, permanent or card in your deck, it’s not going to happen. Your only hope is a quick answer (I try to provide one below) or better matchups.


Mind’s Desire: The bad news continues with another deck that doesn’t care too much if you go off because when they go off a turn or two or five later you’re going to lose anyway. Serra Avatar can protect you from decking yourself, but it won’t help if your entire library is Frozen away in response to a Deep Analysis targeting you. Your best hope is just to go off quickly and try for Rule of Law and Test of Endurance so they have to bounce both. Naturally if they play a Medallion you want to Seal it away so it’s harder for them to go off or to Wish for bounce and play it.


Aluren: Quite possibly even worse than Mind’s Desire for you. You gain as much life as you want; they will remove it and more. Cards like Rule of Law are speedbumps against them, but unless you can pull off Test of Endurance, they won’t be enough.


Scepter-Chant: Arita hoped to defeat permission decks by boarding in Orim’s Chant, but in the Top 8 he was crushed by that very spell on a stick. Aether Vial helps a lot, but this remains a tough matchup, especially since with Life on the radar the smart Scepter-Chant players are going to think about what they need to do to win that matchup even if a Vial resolves. (One obvious example would be devoting a single sideboard slot to Krosan Reclamation, so that once you have full control you can prevent yourself from being decked.) Since Scepter-Chant is likely to be a popular choice among control players, Life players need to think about how they are going to answer it. Disenchant is an obvious sideboard choice, and probably better than Chant, although I would almost certainly split Johnson’s four Disenchants either 2-2 or 3-1 with Naturalize to avoid having the whole set shut out by a lone Meddling Mage.


Cephalid Breakfast: They are normally a touch faster than you, especially if they are also running Aether Vial, so it can easily come down to a very bizarre question – do they have access to Dragon Shadow? With only Dragon Breath for haste, a Breakfast deck can go off and still lose to your team of infinite blockage, but with fear added in you will die if you haven’t gone off. Unfortunately it’s hard for you to prevent this, since Seal of Cleansing can be dealt with by Kami or Ray of Revelation, and anything in your hand will have been taken with Cabal Therapy. But see our sideboarding discussion for an idea that might work…


Timing Issues

Playing Life (or playing against it) doesn’t involve too many complex timing issues, but they are worth being aware of.


When do you sacrifice? Worthy Cause sacrifices on resolution, not on casting. This is good insofar as you don’t lose a creature if it’s countered, but can be bad if your opponent can remove your Task Force or Spiritualist in response as you will be forced to sacrifice your En-Kor for a rather disappointing gain of one or two life points. However, Starlit Sanctum and Animal Boneyard sacrifice as a cost, so once you’ve activated it only Stifle, Bind or something like False Cure will prevent you from gaining big life.


If you’re playing against a Black deck that has two mana open and you only have Worthy Cause, you may want to slow-play it. Put out the creatures with one mana up and pass the turn. If they try to Smother one of your guys, you win in response. If they tap below two mana, same thing. If they go on, you just need to find a second sacrifice vehicle. This is also a good play if you suspect False Cure. Lead with Worthy Cause. If they respond with False Cure, respond by gaining big life so the lifegain resolves before False Cure. (If you don’t have a second sacrifice vehicle, you can still survive False Cure provided you know to sacrifice your en-Kor and not your Task Force.)


Vial Tricks. As noted above, one of the beauties of the deck is that any creature mix including at least one en-Kor and one Spiritualist or Task Force is invulnerable to damage. Vial lets you cast one creature and then Vial out its partner, either on your own turn (with less mana requirement) or in response to an opponent trying to burn one of your creatures out.


Sideboarding

Normally in matchups I provide a sideboard plan that goes with an actual sideboard. The problem with doing this with Life is that there are too many possible sideboard strategies you might follow, and I don’t think there is one clearly superior one to recommend. Thus, I’ll go through the main candidates (including those from the decklists at the top of the article) and what they do for your main matchups.


Several slots of your sideboard are taken up by Living Wish targets. Daru Spiritualist and Nomads en-Kor seem like the best candidates as they have the lowest mana cost, making them the easiest to wish for and cast in a single turn. (The Spiritualist is also superior to Task Force when going off since it can be sacrificed to Sanctum.) Academy Rector can be sacrificed to find Animal Boneyard or, far more likely, Test of Endurance, while Eternal Witness can help rebuild whatever was taken away. Along with Sanctum, that takes up five slots, leaving ten for actual sideboarding. Since we are can tutor for creatures and enchantments (and to a slightly lesser extent artifacts), those will be our best bets for sideboarding.


Genesis

Technically this belongs in the “never boarded, sometimes Wished-for” category. Genesis gives you another way to win against a deck when you’ve gained infinite life but can’t deck them or punch through. Aside from having unlimited 1/Xs to attack with, or being able to sacrifice and reuse your Eternal Witnesses, Genesis and a City of Brass let you use the Black ability of Starlit Sanctum to cause direct life loss to your opponent.


It is only this last ability that is really exciting, since any deck that can deal with all of your creatures attacking (including Serra Avatar) will presumably be able to deal with them never staying dead, e.g. Scepter Chant will simply deny you the ability to attack. However, if you have Aether Vial in play there is no way for a Scepter-Chant player to prevent the lifeloss plan. With the chant lock on, you build up to eight cards to discard Genesis and then each turn simply return an appropriate Cleric, Vial it into play and sacrifice it. Sounds good, right?


Well, sure…if you think that Scepter-Chant can’t destroy your Aether Vial before you drain them out over twenty turns.


Genesis also lets you go infinite with Eternal Witness and Animal Boneyard, getting back whatever you want from your graveyard, sacrificing the Witness, recasting it, etc. Very cool, but who is it cool against?


The big question is how often Genesis recursion is a relevant factor. It’s a neat enough trick that it’s hard to deny it a lone sideboard slot, but at the same time I don’t see which tier-one deck it’s likely to be used again and sideboard slots are precious. As noted above, Scepter-Chant just needs to get your Vial off the board and all the recursion in the world won’t save you. The Rock will remove your plan from the game as well as being able to gain life faster than you can drain it away. The Beatdown decks just lose to your combo (assuming they can’t kill you first), as does Cephalid Breakfast. Aluren and Mind’s Desire are going to kill you long before you can drain them out, and if for some reason they can’t kill you, straightforward beatdown is stronger against them anyway.


Essentially, Genesis looks like the right card for the wrong metagame.


Serenity

As noted, this is an absolute wrecking ball against Affinity, but it also could be worth boarding in against Desire and Scepter-Chant. Both of those decks use Chrome Mox for mana and may tap out early to play a two-mana artifact that is rather important in the matchup. You definitely want to wander the PTQ field before finishing your decklist – if there’s enough Affinity in the house, maindecking one of these makes a lot of sense.


Energy Flux

Arguably just as good against Affinity in the abstract, I just can’t see running this over Serenity. It’s much harder for you to actually cast, and really all you want to do against Affinity is blow up their early game to buy you a few turns, not lock them out for the long game. The comparison between something you can tutor for and then play on turn 2 compared with something you might play on turn 3 but also might have to Rector into play doesn’t seem close. I hate second-guessing PT Top-8er’s choices, but then again I know very well that Top 8 decks often have simple errors. This feels like one to me. Perhaps they didn’t notice that Serenity had been reprinted?


Isochron Scepter

Who says you need permission or Meddling Mage to make Scepter-Chant work? I’m assuming this is only here in Arita’s deck because of the four Chants, and perhaps that’s how he hopes to defeat the Rock – tutor for Scepter, slap a Chant on it and hope they don’t have Naturalize. I’ve heard worse plans, but can’t claim to find this one exciting. Since I don’t think Chant is your most reliable sideboard card, I wouldn’t recommend this either.


Scrabbling Claws

Remember, if you have out the blocking team, Breakfast needs fear to win. Cephalid Breakfast has an easy time with Disenchant – they just yank it out of your hand before animating Sutured Ghoul. They can handle Seal of Cleansing. But most don’t have a maindeck answer to Scrabbling Claws, and it makes life very awkward for them.


Their normal plan is to empty their library and then use Krosan Reclamation to put Exhume/Reanimate on top, draw it and win. With Claws in play, they can’t do this unless they’ve got two Reclamations, since you’ll just remove Sutured Ghoul from the game. Assuming they have access to Reclamation and have Reanimate in hand you can counter the Reanimate by removing Sutured Ghoul (forcing them to Reclaim it). (This won’t work with Exhume, because they’ll Reclaim and then mill the Ghoul back into their graveyard before the Exhume resolves.)


Even if they do have Dragon’s Shadow and manage to go off with Reclamation protection, Scrabbling Claws will buy you a turn before getting hit by a hasty, fearful guy. When the Ghoul resolves, remove Dragon’s Shadow from the game. If you’ve got infinite blockage out, they need the Shadow to win, so they’ll have to Reclaim it and then play it next turn. That gives you a full additional turn to go infinite on them.


Better still, for them to play around Claws with Reclamation requires that they be able to remill themselves after a Claw/Reclamation fight. That, in turn, means that they can’t just sacrifice their en-Kor and Cephalid for Cabal Therapies, which means you may have other tricks for them to deal with, e.g. Disenchant! Not bad for a one-mana artifact that can cantrip as needed.


The question, of course, is how likely Cephalid Breakfast is to show up at your local PTQ and whether the Claws are likely to be useful enough in other matches to board in. Ironically, one matchup it could be useful in is the mirror, where you might be able to remove Test of Faith from the game and/or counter Academy Rector’s ability by removing him from the game in response.


Disenchant/Naturalize

Although you can’t tutor for them, they hit the most obvious sideboard cards you’re likely to face – Sulfuric Vortex and Cursed Totem – as well as being castable at instant-speed against a Scepter. Don’t skimp.


Orim’s Chant

Although this doesn’t quite do the trick against Scepter-Chant, it’s still annoying for them and can be used alongside Disenchants. (Basically, they Chant you for two mana, you respond with Chant. If they don’t counter your Chant, you can Disenchant the Scepter; if they do, you can possibly Disenchant their Scepter since they will have tapped four mana and used one of their relatively few permission spells.)


Orim’s Chant can also Mind’s Desire mid-combo (play it in response to a big Desire and the spells that get revealed will be removed from the game while they pass the turn). I like this plan a lot in an aggressive deck like White Weenie, but it’s lacking here unless your opponent walks into it. The problem is that they should be expecting it and fetch Turnabout before trying to combo you – that’s just a consequence of failing to put on enough pressure against them. Chant is also something you can board in against any decks that you think have sideboard tech against you, e.g. False Cure. All in all, this looks like the sort of card that beats bad players and people who don’t expect it, neither of which you’re likely to face in the top 8 of a PTQ.


Viridian Shaman/Uktabi Orangutan

In theory you’re fine against Scepter-Chant if you can resolve Aether Vial, but my guess is that Scepter-Chant players will be ready for this now that the secret is out. However, once a Vial is in play the monkey becomes an instant-speed and uncounterable answer to Scepters, as well as another beater that can force them to find some answers before next week.


Parallax Wave

Enough of an answer to Akroma or Visara to be worth thinking about and it can also protect your own creatures from removal, but I’m not sold on it, since it can be Duressed or bounced and costs four. Reciprocate might be a better use for the slot if you want something against Reanimator.


Sphere of Resistance/Rule of Law

Both of these cards are hateful to your combo enemies, e.g. Desire and Aluren. The real question is whether they are hateful enough? What you’re basically doing is forcing them to find an answer before they can go off, but unless you can pose them some tough questions in the meantime, that’s not going to be enough.


Thornscape Familiar

I’m curious to know how much use Paul got out of this. On paper it’s quite interesting; a turn 2 Familiar would allow you to play out your entire combo on turn 3. The question is how often it actually works that way. If you have the combo and your opponent can’t kill the Familiar, you can just play one creature on turn 2 and another on turn 3 with the same result. If you’re Wishing for it, you must already have the combo, and you’re not playing it until turn 3, which seems to defeat the purpose. If you board it in and Call it, the same issues apply. I’m probably missing something, but I haven’t found a persuasive use for this card.


And now, some more “provocative” sideboarding possibilities

Zur’s Weirding

Okay, I’m being strange but the Weirding has some potential. The normal objection to “I win” enchantments in Life is that if you can resolve an enchantment and keep it in play until your next upkeep you just win, so why not just use Test of Endurance? The answer is simple – Cranial Extraction. In your normal build you don’t have a quick answer to having Test of Endurance removed – Serra Avatar comes online a bit too late. But Zur’s Weirding is something you can cast off a City or fetch with a Rector, and in many situations it will end the game just as convincingly. Zur’s Weirding can also be devastating before you’ve completed your combo against decks like Aluren or Desire, which may be assuming they’ll just go off and kill you and suddenly find out they can only go off if they already have all the tools in hand.


Cranial Extraction

You have four Cities of Brass, and if you board one out you effectively have seven with your Living Wishes. It’s a longshot, but some of your bad matchups get a whole lot better if you happen to resolve an Extraction.


Scroll Rack

Your search is already generally good enough, so this may not be needed, but it does have its uses. It can hide key cards from Duress or Therapy, and in any long match it combines very well with your shuffling effects to improve your card quality. Furthermore, if you’re playing with Aether Vial it won’t even slow you down much – you can use the Rack to find the creature you want and then Vial them into play. I haven’t tested it yet, but I could see this being fantastic against Scepter-Chant or any other permission-based control deck.


Dust Bowl

While Dual Lands are a thing of the past, there are plenty of non-basic lands out there, and some of your tough matchups (e.g. Scepter-Control, Desire) are vulnerable to mana assaults. I haven’t tested this yet, but one fundamental truth in Magic is that your opponent will sometimes be mana-light. Devoting one sideboard slot to a Wishable back-breaker for those times seems worth a look.


Rancor/Armadillo Cloak/Sword of Fire and Ice/Crusade

Untested and probably just silly, I can’t help but be attracted to it. The idea is to address your biggest problem against combo decks – lack of pressure. The normal game goes as follows:


1) You go off.

2) They take their time while you poke them for a couple of points of damage.

3) Having set up a perfect hand, they kill you.


The normal sideboard options like Sphere and Rule of Law put up barriers that they have to get past, but don’t put them under any time pressure. That’s normally a horrible plan – there’s nothing a combo or control deck fears less than being told, “Okay, here’s an obstacle…take your time, but you can’t win until you deal with it.” My thought is that you probably ditch the combo altogether (in all seriousness, neither Desire nor Aluren usually cares whether your life total is twenty or twenty bazillion) and look for ways to accelerate the beatdown – in essence, you board into an aggro-control deck. You Disenchant their Medallions, Rancor through their Familiars, and suddenly Rule of Law or Sphere of Resistance aren’t just annoying…they’re potentially fatal, because your clock is five or six turns long instead of ten. Aside from this plan not being tested, another issue is whether you can afford to devote that many slots. Food for thought, nothing more.


Engineered Plague

As with Zur’s Wierding, with only four Cities of Brass for Black mana and no way to tutor for them, you’re basically saying you’re going to get a Rector and put it out there unless you’re lucky and happen to draw a City. That’s not the worst plan, but I’m not convinced it’s better than your normal plan. Moreover, since most Goblin decks are packing answers for the Plague (either Dralnu’s Crusade or Goblin King), I wouldn’t count on it working out. (Of course, Engineered Plague could also be brought in against Aluren as another enchantment they have to get rid of before they can go off, but it seems underpowered for that purpose.)


Hugs ’til next time…and of course, Long Life!


Chad


Further reading:

Mike Flores discussing “combo decks that don’t just win.”


http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/mf24


BDM’s “Class of Columbus

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=mtgcom/daily/bd158


Phil Johnson’s tournament report on playing Vial Life:

http://www.neutralground.net/Forums/ForumItem.asp?NewsID=2518&BackupLink=Main.asp