I’m going to take a little break from Onslaught limited. Instead, I am here to talk about a card very near and dear to my heart: Tradewind Rider.
It has been a long time since I took a stab at a Constructed article, but after Grand Prix: New Orleans, I got a bit of the Extended bug. I hadn’t worked much on the format and I was somewhat at a loss for what to play, so I decided to make a trip to Cleveland, Ohio to play in a Trial. I only had two byes, so I figured there was more to be gained from the trip than simply playtesting. Also, my roommate Travis had just picked up the game again in Onslaught. Stronghold was his last set, so he had some catching up to do.
I was going to play Aluren simply because I felt people would be unprepared for it. I came home from work one day and found this list on Team Academy, of all places:
4 Opposition
3 Static Orb
3 Deranged Hermit
4 Wall of Blossoms
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Intuition
4 Mana Leak
4 Accumulated Knowledge
3 Tradewind Rider
3 Living Wish
4 Windswept Heath
5 Forest
6 Island
2 Treetop Village
1 Gaea’s Cradle
4 Yavimaya Coast
SB: 1 Island
SB: 1 Gaea’s Cradle
SB: 1 Deranged Hermit
SB: 1 Tradewind Rider
SB: 1 Gilded Drake
SB: 1 Masticore
SB: 3 Ravenous Baloth
SB: 3 Snap
SB: 3 Bind
Ben Goodman won a GP Trial at Your Move Games with this deck, and it intrigued me. I have never been a huge fan of Mana Leak. Not only that, it wasn’t very efficient in this deck. Counterspell was out of the question due to mana constraints. I felt that you could add black to this deck without much harm to the mana base and use proactive disruption like Duress and Cabal Therapy rather than reactive in the form of counter-magic. Adding black to the deck also meant I could cut those awful Accumulated Knowledges. Now, I have no problem with the card; in fact, it is quite good in the two color version. But when you add sac lands, you get the additional shuffling needed to run Brainstorm. Static Orbs seemed unnecessary, so I put in Yavimaya Elders as more shufflers and mana fixing.
The deck I took to the Trial was something like:
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Llanowar Elves
4 Wall of Blossoms
4 Opposition
4 Duress
4 Brainstorm
3 Tradewind Rider
2 Deranged Hermit
2 Yavimaya Elder
1 Intuition
2 Cabal Therapy
1 Genesis
3 Living Wish
4 Yavimaya Coast
4 Polluted Delta
3 Island
2 Swamp
8 Forest
1 Gaea’s Cradle
Sideboard:
3 Ravenous Baloth
3 Pernicious Deed
2 Bind
1 Crypt Creeper
1 Gilded Drake
1 Deranged Hermit
1 Tradewind Rider
1 City of Brass
1 Masticore
1 Yavimaya Elder
I managed to win the twenty-one person trial with this deck – but it was not a decisive victory, so I knew I needed to make some changes. I nearly lost my match in the top 8 due to not having a Dust Bowl in the sideboard. I lost a game to the Rock solely because of Volrath’s Stronghold. That was one change I knew I had to make. I also apparently got lucky in that tournament as U/G never got active Waterfront Bouncer. Due to this I never wished for Masticore the whole tournament.
I brought the deck with me to New Orleans, although I was fairly confident I was going to play Mike Aten’s version of Red Deck Wins. I still liked the Tradewind deck. I felt like I had a good matchup versus Psychatog and Green/Blue. Rock struck me as completely dependant on Deed. This meant as much as I disliked the Binds in the sideboard, they had a place. The biggest problem we faced was Red Deck Wins.
Matt Linde and I continually tested the Tradewind deck and he became sold on it. I was still underconfident, so I stuck with RDW. We knew we had to make the deck better against RDW if it was going to head into a GP however – especially with Matt having only two byes. The first change we made were moving Baloths to the main. They have a nice casting-cost-to-power ratio with a solid added ability. The next step was getting to a point in the game where we could cast Baloth. Birds and Elves were very fragile to burn – and with only twenty-two lands, that was a scary prospect. We cut the Elves for Vine Trellis. The final product looked like this:
2 Deranged Hermit
3 Tradewind Rider
3 Vine Trellis
3 Ravenous Baloth
4 Yavimaya Elder
4 Wall of Blossoms
4 Birds of Paradise
4 Cabal Therapy
3 Opposition
4 Living Wish
4 Brainstorm
1 Swamp
3 Island
4 Polluted Delta
4 Yavimaya Coast
10 Forest
Sideboard:
2 Intuition
2 Pernicious Deed
1 City of Brass
1 Dustbowl
1 Tradewind Rider
1 Gilded Drake
1 Uktabi Orangutan
1 Ravenous Baloth
1 Genesis
1 Deranged Hermit
1 Crypt Creeper
2 Interdict
As you can see in the”Off the Beaten Path” article on the New Orleans coverage, Matt lost every game to the Masticore we cut from the sideboard. I am still unsure which is better, Bone Shredder or Masticore. Bone Shredder is quicker, but Masticore is more flexible.
This points to exactly how important testing is. My limited experience in the Blue/Green matchup seemed laughable; the problem was the sample was too small. If I had ever encountered an active Bouncer, I would have known this problem and would not have cut the Masticore from the sideboard. Meddling Mage and Spellbane Centaur were problems I had thought of; I suggested the possibility of putting some number of Smothers main deck, but this compared to Wishing for Bone Shredder seemed weak. In the end, it seemed that we simply could disregard these cards. One simple deck construction error caused Matt to lose three matches.
James Stroud developed a similar deck and it carried both he and Dave Williams to PTQ victory. They played a version of it, along with Bob Maher, in the GP:
4 Yavimaya Coast
2 Treetop Village
7 Island
7 Forest
1 Karplusan Forest
1 Shivan Reef
3 Waterfront Bouncer
1 Genesis
4 Birds of Paradise
3 Llanowar Elves
4 Wild Mongrel
3 Deranged Hermit
4 Tradewind Rider
4 Wall of Blossoms
3 Gilded Drake
3 Spike Feeder
Sideboard:
3 Powder Keg
3 Naturalize
1 Genesis
1 Masticore
1 Llawan, Cephalid Empress
1 Gilded Drake
1 Deranged Hermit
2 Rootwater Thief
1 Flametongue Kavu
Dave, Jim, and Bob did the opposite of what we did: They added Flametongue at the last minute to deal with those problem cards. Their version was far more aggressive than ours, which probably tips the Psychatog matchup more in their favor; however, they are more susceptible to Deed with no disruption.
In any event, This is not an archetype to be glossed over. Extended is not nearly the insanely fast format we knew years ago. There is plenty of time for a lock-type deck to operate, and this one is incredibly powerful. The difference in builds is a personal choice. If you are traditionally a control player give my deck a try. If you are more aggro, go for Stroud’s list. I suggest a lot of playtesting, since this is not a deck you can just pick up. I made several mistakes in the trial simply due to lack of testing. I hope I have helped give you insight into this archetype with the close of the Extended season upon us.