Ah yes, it’s time for everyone to dust off their old fetchlands, Morphlings, Psychatogs, and Mox Diamonds – it’s Extended season! This season is quite similar to the old seasons of Extended due to multiple viable combo decks that see the battlefields with regularity, and also very different – at Pro Tour: Columbus, we saw eight different archetypes represented in the Top 8. That’s astounding, really! That should provide some serious evidence to the argument that states that we’re playing in a wide-open format, where any deck can win!
Of course, we all know now that Canali’s Affinity deck was facing an underpowered field of decks refusing to pack global hate for the deck in the form of Energy Flux and Pulverize, and decided to use pinpoint removal like Oxidize and general-purpose cards like Meltdown (as a Burning Wish target). As such, his deck was able to sail through the light removal into the finals, and with a little bit of “fairy godmother” luck from Aether Vial (turn 1 in all three games against Nakamura), he is our Pro Tour: Columbus winner!
Does that make Affinity the deck to play? Well, if you’re anywhere near the Ohio Valley, probably not. I say this because Red Decks are quite popular around here, almost to the point of statistical overload. No matter what deck evolves as the “best deck” in Extended, Red decks will comprise over 50% of the field in any given PTQ in the Ohio Valley, without fail. People here love to burn creatures and send Jackal Pups in the red zone year after year after year, and will metagame their Red decks to beat whatever is popular, rather than actually play what is popular. It’s a phenomenon I haven’t even begun to understand, but regardless, due to the large presence of Mountains in my area, Affinity was pretty much ruled out. People are getting wise to the deck’s strength and have decided to run real sideboard cards against it, like the aforementioned Pulverize. So, on the hunt for a deck that performed well against the red decks that I was sure to face in the upcoming PTQs here, I studied the Top 8 decklists from Columbus for clues on where to start.
I knew that I wanted to play something that wasn’t Red Deck Wins, but was open to the possibility of playing Goblins, for the sole purpose of not wanting to interact with my opponent. I had to do way too much of that during the Block Constructed season playing the Freshmaker deck, and I have to deal with a lot of it in current Standard when I am playing mono-Blue control, so I just wanted to combo someone or attack with thousands of goblins simultaneously, completely oblivious to the opponent’s resources.
Unfortunately, nothing struck my fancy other than Oiso’s Blue/Black Mind’s Desire deck, which I shuffled up and played several games against various builds of RDW. The results were not good – Nightscape Familiar kept dying, and the Vampiric Tutors put me to precariously low life totals. Chill didn’t help out enough, and the Cunning Wish plan was often too slow and unwieldy to get around Rishadan Port, Wasteland, and cheap burn spells.
Frustrated by the initial playtesting results, I went through all the decklists from Day 2 at PT: Columbus, and spotted something that caught my eye:
Mind’s Desire – Morgan Douglass
1 Plains
4 Adarkar Wastes
4 Flooded Strand
8 Island
4 Sunscape Familiar
4 Cloud of Faeries
4 Chrome Mox
3 Turnabout
3 Deep Analysis
3 Snap
1 Cunning Wish
1 Tendrils of Agony
2 Intuition
2 Merchant Scroll
4 Sapphire Medallion
4 Mind’s Desire
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Brainstorm
Sideboard:
4 Sphere of Law
4 Brain Freeze
3 Submerge
1 Turnabout
1 Snap
1 Rebuild
1 Intuition
If you don’t know how the deck works, you basically want to play a cost reducer, draw a lot of cards early, and cast a lot of free spells (by Snapping your Cloud of Faeries repeatedly) to build up to a large storm count, then cast Mind’s Desire and flip another Mind’s Desire, eventually casting Brain Freeze to deck the opponent.
The sideboard really intrigued me. Sphere of Law, you say? I was immediately interested in the uber-Chill that effectively shut down all of RDW’s early and mid-game threats, and the lack of an overpopulated Wish-based sideboard. The four Brain Freezes in the sideboard made a lot of sense, making the control mirror match a bloodbath by manually building up to storm counts of 10 or higher. Submerge was necessary to temporarily remove the madness outlet to prevent Circular Logics from the Madness decks, and also cast for free.
I put this deck together and started testing with various GFC teammates, and liked the deck from the get-go. The only card that seemed lackluster to me was Turnabout. I was surprised at the number of times that I was casting Intuition for 3 Deep Analysis rather than 3 Accumulated Knowledge (the general rule, in my opinion, is that if you have an AK in hand, Intuition for the AKs, if not, Intuition for Deep Analysis).
Some major points of the Blue/White Mind’s Desire deck:
- You want to cast a cost reducer on turn 2 all the time. I cannot understand how Oiso only ran six cost reducers, even if he compensated with Vampiric Tutor. It is crucial that you have a cost reducer down on turn 2 to accelerate your AK/Intuition/Deep Analysis engine.
- You want to draw Intuition, very badly. Merchant Scroll really only finds Intuition and AK #4, and occasionally Cunning Wish.
- The (minimal) Cunning Wish sideboard is an evil necessity.
After playing more and more with the deck and understanding the nuances of it, I decided to make a few minor changes that suited me personally:
Mind’s Desire – Kyle Boddy
1 Plains
4 Adarkar Wastes
4 Flooded Strand
8 Island
4 Chrome Mox
4 Cloud of Faeries
4 Sapphire Medallion
4 Sunscape Familiar
3 Snap
2 Turnabout
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Brainstorm
3 Deep Analysis
3 Intuition
2 Merchant Scroll
1 Cunning Wish
4 Mind’s Desire
1 Brain Freeze
Sideboard:
4 Sphere of Law
3 Brain Freeze
3 Submerge
1 Mana Leak
1 Intuition
1 Rebuild
1 Boomerang
1 Snap
I added an Intuition to the maindeck and subtracted a Turnabout, since you always want to draw Intuition. The first two get AK/DA, and the third one can fetch a Mind’s Desire to go off or thin the deck of three lands before you cast the Desire itself. Turnabout wasn’t too hot for me in playtesting, but still warranted a few copies maindeck for the dual purpose of acting like a Mana Short as well as providing a “free spell” and additional mana with cost reducers in play.
I don’t like the Tendrils of Agony maindeck, because due to the proliferation of Red decks in the Ohio Valley, you don’t have that much time to set up a huge Mind’s Desire to drain their life for the win! Using Brainstorm as the mechanism to shuffle Tendrils of Agony back in the deck is both annoying and time-consuming, and if you are casting Mind’s Desire for a large enough quantity anyway, the chances are good that you’ll hit a second copy to continue the chain (where the storm count will certainly be enough to finish the opponent with a single Brain Freeze) or you’ll be able to Scroll/Wish for two Brain Freezes to finish the opponent off.
Brain Freeze is now the de facto kill mechanism – Deep Analysis them, then respond by Brain Freezing them for their deck. This frees up a slot in the sideboard, where I added a general purpose Mana Leak to stop random things, a Boomerang as a catch-all for Rule of Law or other such permanents, and cut the fourth Turnabout to make room.
The single Cunning Wish in the deck is almost too many – I tested two and three Wishes maindeck, and neither number impressed me. You are almost angry when you draw the card, to tell you the truth, and it rarely gets the singular targets in the sideboard (typically gets Snap or Intuition). That said, you really don’t want to lose to random enchantments and the crazed affinity draw, so using Merchant Scroll to find the Wish is sometimes a necessary evil to further your gameplan.
Now that we’ve got the boring part over with, let’s go over some popular matchups, shall we?
Red Deck Wins
In game one you are relatively favored, but you must be careful not to run the Clouds of Faeries into too many burn spells, if you can help it. Try to Merchant Scroll up a copy of Turnabout to tap their lands before attempting to go off, stopping the instant-speed burn and the Rishadan Ports. Most people are playing Magma Jet over Volcanic Hammer, so the Sunscape Familiars have a great chance of living one-two turns. Take as much time as you can and combo them on the turn before you die – that’s the ultimate plan to beat any Red deck with a combo deck.
After sideboard, you want to cast a turn 3 Sphere of Law with the help of Chrome Mox. This effectively buys you 4-5 turns until they can start attacking you with morphs, Blistering Firecats, and get Cursed Scroll online. Typically I’ll side out the Deep Analyses and one Merchant Scroll and side in the Spheres of Law. They will try to keep your mana tied down using Pillage, Rishadan Port, and Wasteland, but if you can resolve a Sphere of Law, the game is typically over for them. Watch out for Blood Oath.
Goblin-Death/Bidding
Against Goblins it’s a pure race to combo the other person out. Keep in mind, you might need to use a Snap to bounce a Goblin Warchief to make the goblins lose haste, so you can buy a turn to win. Side in the Spheres of Law for the Deep Analyses + Merchant Scroll and their only way to beat you (with traditional builds) is with a large Goblin Piledriver. Again, watch out for Blood Oath.
Blue/Green Madness
This matchup is annoying, but favors you for the most part. Hopefully more people will follow [author name="Cedric Phillips"]Cedric Phillips[/author]‘ advice in his latest article* and play Unsummon rather than Daze, the card that is so very annoying for this deck. Daze costs nothing, is extremely tough to figure out whether or not your opponent has it in his hand, and randomly counters the early cost reducers you need to win.
In game one, you want to resolve an early cost reducer if at all possible and you want to have two on the table by turn 3. The key to the matchup is generating large amounts of card and mana advantage early in the game, the latter being something the Madness deck isn’t too good at doing. You typically have plenty of time to finish them off, since they aren’t nearly as aggressive as the Red decks, take your time to fill your hand up and set up a Turnabout to tap their resources down before going off. Should you be unable to do that, remove the madness outlet with Snap and then proceed from there.
Side in the Submerges (no kidding!) and use them judiciously on their madness outlets. You can side out a cost reducer, a Turnabout, and a Merchant Scroll to make room. If you like, you can side in two Submerges and leave one in the board as a Wish target (I don’t really like this strategy). After board, follow the same game plan as you did in game one.
Reanimator
This matchup isn’t exactly a good one for you – they have Cabal Therapy to strip your hand of Snaps, Cunning Wishes, and often have a turn 2 Akroma staring you down with no real way to answer it. Your best bet is to rush to beat them by casting a turn 1 cost reducer (typically not a good play) and a turn 2 Intuition/AK setup, with the goal being a turn 3 combo.
After sideboard, they get Duress while you gain nothing. Ensnaring Bridge is an option if you feel there will be a lot of Reanimator in your local metagame (certainly not mine), but overall, this matchup is fairly bad for you.
Cephalid Breakfast
You simply cannot win. They have a fragile combo that is easily stopped by red burn spells, creature removal, or even light countermagic, and you have none of these. After milling their entire deck during your end step, they’ll Cabal Therapy you for relevant cards (Snap, Cunning Wish) then combo you out. Game one is nearly impossible, but you have to follow the turbo-desire plan as outlined in the Reanimator matchup.
Side in the Brain Freezes, side out the Deep Analyses, and try to deck them in their upkeep when they cast the Krosan Reclamation. Do your best not to Merchant Scroll it up, as they’ll then know it’s coming.
Affinity
Like I said, I don’t expect too much Affinity in my metagame, due to the proliferation of Red decks (it was similar in the Mirrodin Block), so the only precaution I have is a singular Rebuild in the sideboard, which is typically enough to halt the deck from going ballistic and buy you two-three turns to win.
In both games one and two (no relevant sideboard cards come in, aside from Rebuild which you bring in so you can Merchant Scroll it up) you want to play at a regular pace, but watch out for Meddling Mages – the card that is the bane of any Mind’s Desire deck. You have to wish for the Boomerang to remove it to combo them, but if they have the Vial on two, it’s going to be difficult to win. Wish/Scroll for Rebuild, cast it, and then win one or two turns afterwards.
The Rock / Psychatog
Both decks are grouped together, regardless of how structurally different they are, because the Desire deck plays in fundamentally the same way against both.
This matchup is a grind. They have discard spells in the form of Duress (and Cabal Therapy for the Rock) to strip your hand out and spot removal for the Sunscape Familiars, and light countermagic for the Psychatog deck. Luckily Rock and Psychatog decks aren’t too good at applying early pressure, so casting Intuition for 3 Deep Analysis is usually going to win you the game in either matchup if you can fire one off. Take your time in what is the classic combo vs. control matchup and finish them off with an overload of spells plus Brain Freeze. It should go without saying that you side in the additional copies of Brain Freeze (and often side out the actual Mind’s Desires!) to create a large chain of spells, including countermagic if they are playing Psychatog, and casting several smaller-sized Brain Freezes that end up being lethal. If you fear Cranial Extraction (and you probably should from both decks, but mainly the Rock decks), side out the Mind’s Desires, side in two of the Brain Freezes, and you should be able to create the large chain of spells without the Desire so you are able to deck them.
The Blue/White Mind’s Desire deck is very resilient to discard and countermagic and is very consistent due to the Intuition/AK/Deep Analysis backbone, and I highly recommend it for the PTQ season. What it isn’t, however, is easy to play. You have to get hundreds of playtest games in goldfish mode just to better understand all the card interactions, Brainstorm tricks, cost reducer tricks, and the minimum number of storm copies of Mind’s Desire you want to have on the stack when you finally attempt to fire the bullet**.
Playtest it against all the matchups you expect to see and keep goldfishing it in your spare time to fully understand the card interactions and synergies between them, and you’ll be rewarded with a deck that is both very consistent and fun to play.
See you at the PTQs, and may you all be playing Mountains!
–Kyle Boddy
GFC Teammate