[Editor’s Note: I understand this article is late in getting to you (mostly due to Steven’s busy school schedule, which I’m sure most of you understand), but enough work has gone into these two articles that I felt they should still see print. There are interesting discussions throughout this work that can be applied to any Constructed format, so I’d encourage you to look for the lessons and not dwell on the fact that most of the discussion centers around an almost dead format.]
You can find part 1 of this article here.
Extended has a lot of the same limitations that Type One has. In Extended, people will come to tournaments playing the Rock or Red Deck Wins simply because that’s what they can build – people have a limited card pool. This limitation will be amplified by the fact that people aren’t going to want to invest in cards that are going to be banned in a few weeks. As such, you can’t just go in expecting the best decks. You will undoubtedly face a range of decks no matter what deck/metagame decisions you choose to make. That makes metagaming a more perilous endeavor – far more so at the PTQs than at a Grand Prix (after having three byes).
Metagame/hate decks are something I never recommend for the reason that they aren’t very powerful – and even if they are, they usually don’t even approach the power level of the targeted decks. Despite effective hosers, the lack of inherent power is most visible in match-ups outside the scope of its hate. Another risk is that you may not even play the deck you are supposed to be hosing. The second reason is that in degenerate formats, more powerful decks have the best chance of just being more broken and faster than another incredibly powerful deck. For example, as broken as Osterberg’s Mindslaver lock deck is, or Kai’s Tinker deck, I believe that the Twiddle Desire deck is simply more broken – and so you may go off on turn 2 with Stifle backup, while the Mindslaver deck is still setting itself up for a turn 3 lock/kill/combo.
That isn’t to say that Metagame/hate decks can’t win. They can and do. In Type One the power of some hate is so strong that either alone or in combination, Null Rod and Blood Moon will take out a chunk of the field. The point I’m making is that the more broken the format truly is, the risk increases that the hate deck won’t do its job.
If you do want to play a hate/metagame deck, I suggest acquiring the skill and experience with the format that Ben Rubin has. Knowing intimately how each card you have is going function in each match-up is critical. Knowing what works and what doesn’t, knowing what to sideboard, knowing what hands you can keep – these are all questions that, to a large degree, are answered by intensive testing.
Despite the degeneracy, power isn’t everything – although it is a good part of the equation. Two other criteria are relevant: consistency and resiliency. When you have a spate of very strong decks to choose from, the deck to play is the a) the most powerful deck and b) the most consistent deck, and c) the most resilient deck in the face of hate (although not overwhelming hate) and disruption. There are certainly other factors to keep in mind. But if you are having trouble deciding, these are the three are most important criteria to keep consider.
Another reason to play the most powerful deck is because it can overpower control through sheer force (even if the deck you are playing happens to be a control deck). The most resilient deck will be able to execute its game plan in the face of strong disruption. In these power-heavy fields, consistency is key. Being able to reliably get the goods is just as important as playing the most powerful deck. This is one of the problems that Type One Workshop decks suffer from relative to smooth combo decks like Long.dec.
Type One Workshop prison decks rely on the four Mishra’s Workshops, Tolarian Academy, and broken accelerants like Mana Crypt to make its symmetrical spells asymmetrical (cards like Sphere of Resistance, Tangle Wire, and Smokestack). Because the deck has an insufficient quantity of those key lands, it is a far less consistent deck than other combo decks which can win very easily with a range of hands. As a resiliency issue, Wastelanding these key mana producers often has the same effect.
Applying that criteria to the decks at hand – which do you think is the most consistent/powerful/resilient?
Let’s demonstrate what I’m talking about before trying to answer this question, and before we talk about sideboarding.
Feature Game One: (2 Turns)
Desire V. Bosh
My Opening Hand:
Saprazzan Skerry,
Chrome Mox,
Twiddle,
Burst of Energy,
Meditate,
Tinker,
And Diminishing Returns
Chris’ Opening Hand:
Game Three: 2 Goblin Welder, 2 Grim Monolith, Metalworker, Tangle Wire, Tinker
Mulligan: Metalworker, Grim Monolith, Ancient Tomb, Great Furnace, Tangle Wire, Bosh, Iron Golem
Turn One:
Chris is playing first:
He drops Ancient Tomb, which is tapped for Grim Monolith, which is tapped for Metalworker. He passes the turn to me.
That’s about as good as it gets for these decks. All that remains to be seen is if he has the goods to make it deadly by next turn. In last week’s article, we looked at a game where he had Mindslaver in hand and activated it. At this point, if he hasn’t played Chalice at one, that’s the card I fear most. Even if he doesn’t have the Slaver in hand, he may have a Blue mana source, Tinker, and that could be enough to slave me if he has two artifacts in hand.
I draw Tinker. Since I already had a Tinker in hand, I now have another Chrome Mox imprint target. I drop the Skerry and pass the turn.
Turn Two:
Chris drops another Ancient Tomb. That rules out Tinker unless he has a Chromatic Sphere. He activates the Worker and reveals Great Furnace and Bosh. He now plays Bosh. And passes the turn.
You know what happens next:
I untap and draw another Twiddle. I drop Chrome Mox and imprint Meditate. I Tinker up Gilded Lotus, and Tinker into another Lotus. Storm Count: 3. I tap the Lotus for WWW and play Burst. I tap the Lotus for UUU and play Twiddle. I tap the Lotus for UUU and play another twiddle. Storm Count: 6 and WWUUUU floating. For now, I leave the Lotus untapped. I play Diminishing Returns with UW floating. My Storm Count is: 7.
My Returns doesn’t get better than this:
Twiddle,
Dream’s Grip,
Dream’s Grip,
Dream’s Grip,
Burst of Energy,
Mind’s Desire,
Seat of the Synod.
Suffice it to say, my Desire is for thirteen – nearly a third of my deck at this point.
Against most decks, a turn 2 Bosh should be enough to seal the deal. This illustrates one of the problems I have with both Kai’s Tinker deck and Osterberg’s Bosh deck – they have game plans which are less than utterly broken, which results in a speed slower than other more lethal decks. Kai’s Tinker deck may invest itself into playing a Masticore in certain games. Or it will build up over the course of two turns to play an incredibly large Stroke of Genius, by which it will have sufficient resources to utterly go nuts.
In the interim, both decks play cards like Tangle Wire, and Kai’s deck uses Rishadan Port. While I would recommend both decks over the Desire deck for choices for the actual PTQ, for me, I simply cannot abide by that sort of game plan. I would rather seal the deal than ride a Bosh, Myr Incubator, or a Masticore, god forbid (go five turn clocks).
One point I have just illustrated is that being more powerful is more than just having more broken cards, its also about being faster. Against a deck with cards equally capable of dealing the deal, what happens?
Feature Game Two:
Twiddle Desire v. Belcher (a.k.a”The Clock”)
My opening hand is:
Sapprazzan Skerry,
Grim Monolith,
Grim Monolith,
Tinker,
Twiddle,
Meditate,
And Trade Secrets.
Chris is playing first.
Turn One:
Chris drops a Polluted Delta and breaks it to find Island, and then casts Brainstorm. He’s looking for something right now. He passes the turn though.
Steve:
I draw a Mystical Tutor. I drop my Skerry into play tapped.
Turn Two:
Chris drops City of Traitors and taps it for Grim Monolith. He taps the Island and the Monolith to tinker away the Monolith for Slaver. He plays a Chrome Mox imprinting Brainstorm. He passes the turn.
I’m now under the gun. If I didn’t have such a good chance of combo’ing out next turn, I might want to reconsider my plan of attack. As it stands, I go for it:
Steve:
I draw a Dream’s Grip. I tap Skerry for UU and I Twiddle it. Recall it’s my only land at this point. I play both Grim Monoliths consecutively, generating U4 in my mana pool. Storm Count: 3. I Tinker up Gilded Lotus leaving 2 in my mana pool. I tap the Gilded Lotus for UUU and then Grip it. I have UU2 in my mana pool with an untapped Lotus and a Storm Count of 5.
At this point the debate is whether to play Meditate or Trade Secrets. If I keep Trade Secrets in my hand and I fail to go off this turn, I’m certain to lose as he’ll just repeat Trade Secrets until I’m decked. However, using up both that colorless seems compelling to me should I draw 4 blue intensive spells. In retrospect, I’m not sure it really matters and the reason described to play the Trade Secrets is probably more compelling. Don’t forget I have Mystical Tutor. I Meditate leaving U in my mana pool. I draw: Tendrils of Agony, Brainstorm, Twiddle, and Tinker. At this point, I now have the game sealed. I tap the Gilded Lotus for UUU, taking me to UUUU in my mana pool. I play Twiddle on the Lotus making my Storm Count: 7. I tap the Lotus for Black giving me UUUBBB. I play Tinker (for Gilded Lotus) and Brainstorm just to up my storm count and play a lethal Tendrils with a Blue floating.
Just as a side note, Wasteland would have won that game for any opponent, provided they win before I topdeck a Blue source and another mana to cast a Grim Monolith.
I chose these two games as being representative of what testing has revealed – Desire is probably the most powerful deck in the format. I want to be clear – there is more to power than just Speed. There is objective card strength. Desire and Returns are broken. As I said yesterday, Desire is not a card that will ever be used fairly when used. One of the earliest comparisons with Desire was Time Spiral. In retrospect, that was a poor comparison. Desire is more powerful. Returns is also insane. Having a Timetwister at four mana is quite strong. Returns has made a showing in Type One in the last year and it has proven its worth in that format as well. The ability to reset your opponents hand on turn 1 and 2 with Returns can be just brutal if you shuffle them into a terrible hand while they sit helpless.
One of the reasons objective card strength is relevant to power is because you can over-power your opponents. Disruption is less effective if the objective card strength of a good portion of your cards is very high. To a certain extent that is the case with Twiddle-Desire. This bleeds into the second criteria: Resiliency. Last week I discussed the consistency issues – so I’m not going to dwell much on them here. I noted that the spell base is consistent, but the mana base is not. The Resiliency question then is: What sort of disruption is likely to take the game from you? And, what threats are the ones you have to watch out for most?
Let’s take a look at the effectiveness of Duress.
Duress can be strong, but it can also be insufficient. In some of our games versus Hermit, multiple Duresses were not enough to stop me. Part of the reason is that I would still have enough steam to cast something which would just refill my hand. Another reason is something which reveals how truly weak Duress is relative to true countermagic – with Duress, you don’t force the opponent to actually invest in the spell they are going to play, and in many cases have made their decision making process easier by winnowing down the alternatives.
In contrast, with countermagic the player has invested in playing a particular spell, which you are completely negating with your counterspell – and by extension you are stealing all the mana investment that they put into it. However, counterspell decks may have serious trouble with this deck is because each of your Twiddle effects can be used very early on to deny them UU. Casting Twiddle on an Island in your first main phase, and then playing a key spell in your second main phase can be key to combo’ing out.
Here is an example of a game where Duress is most potent.
Feature Game Three:
Desire V. The Clock
I’m playing first this game:
My hand is:
Saprazzan Skerry, City of Traitors, Ancient Tomb, Seat of Synod, Meditate, Tinker, and Mind’s Desire.
Turn One:
I drop a Skerry into play tapped and pass the turn.
Chris plays Delta, Swamp, and Duress.
At this point he takes my Tinker and has significantly stunted my game plan.
Turn Two:
However, I topdeck Mystical Tutor. At this point I debate whether to drop Seat or Tomb. In the end I decide that my game plan is going to play Meditate unless he is about to win. I drop Ancient Tomb and pass the turn.
Chris plays Duress. In response I Meditate into: Tinker, Twiddle, Ancient Tomb, and another Seat. At this point I have a problem. I have one Blue floating and I consider Mystical Tutoring on the assumption that he’ll take the Tinker. But I have to assume that if I Mystical for Tinker he’ll take my Desire or the Twiddle. But if I don’t, then I’ll have the Mystical to up my Storm count and get whatever I need. He takes the Mystical Tutor.
On his second turn he drops City of Traitors and Charbelcher.
Turn Three:
Rather than Desire for three, I decide to wait a few turns because it doesn’t look like Chris is going to win next turn. Unfortunately, he topdecked Mana Severance, played it and killed me.
The Duress into my opening hand was painful as it hinged entirely on the Tinker. I was lucky to topdeck my way out of that problem – but so was he to draw Severance. Even at its strongest – with double Duress, it almost wasn’t enough to stop me. But it did buy enough time for his own combo to go online and kill me.
I think this is the true value of these threatening cards – when they are used in conjunction with key hosers or win conditions. In other words, disruption is most effective when used for Tempo – to buy time to get another answer online. Here is a great example of that:
Feature Game Four:
Kai’s Tinker v. Desire
My Opening hand:
Seat of Synod,
Chrome Mox,
Chrome Mox,
Mystical tutor,
Brainstorm,
Mind’s Desire,
Mind’s Desire.
I am playing first. Chris mulligans.
Turn One:
I drop the Seat and pass the turn. I am wary of his Duress so I am keeping my Brainstorm up.
Chris drops Ancient Tomb and passes the turn. On his endstep, I Brainstorm into Ancient Tomb, Seat of Synod, and Meditate. I put back the Seat and a Mox.
Turn Two:
On my upkeep I tap the Seat and cast Mystical Tutor for Tinker. I play the Mox imprinting one of my two Desires. I drop the Tomb and tap it and the Mox to Tinker away the Mox (not the Seat) into Gilded Lotus. At this point I am likely to play Meditate on his endstep in the hopes he plays Tangle Wire.
Chris Drops another Ancient Tomb and taps both for Thran Dynamo. He taps the Dynamo to drop Tangle Wire.
On his endstep I meditate into: Skerry, Tendrils, Tinker, and Tinker.
On his second turn he taps down leaving only the Dynamo up and plays a Port. My Meditate has not only given me access to four more cards, it has also made his Tangle Wire worse while he must face the brunt of it decreasing the effectiveness of his Wire. This is precisely the scenario in which Tangle Wire is weakest. He drops a Port and passes the turn back. Unfortunately, my Meditate wasn’t as busty as I hoped. The problem I have is that I don’t have enough storm to really make my Desire effective. What I needed was a Twiddle.
Turn Three:
I tap all three permanents. I draw Chrome Mox. I drop Skerry and pass the turn.
Chris taps down the Wire and a Tomb. He plays a Seat and passes the turn.
Turn Four:
I tap down the Skerry and a Seat. He ports my Tomb.
I draw Chrome Mox. In order to evade his Ports and Wires I Tinker away a Seat into a second Gilded Lotus.
Chris draws Tinker. He plays an Island, taps it and a Tomb and Tinkers away Wire with one counter and tutors up Mindslaver. He taps the Dynamo and the Seat and Slaves me.
He draws a Dream’s Grip off my library. He imprints a Tendrils one of my Chrome Mox. Youch. He taps for ten mana, plays Grip, nine mana. He plays my second Tinker just to up the Storm count. He plays another Chrome Mox for nothing. He plays Desire for five seeing: Twiddle, Dream’s Grip, Brainstorm, Burst of Energy, and Diminishing Returns. He twiddles my Lotus to get bunches of mana and casts Diminishing Returns. Unfortunately, he draws into a Trade Secrets and decks me right there by repeating it until I am decked.
This is one of the games where, despite my attempts to take advantage of Tangle Wire and make it weak, it was barely sufficient to keep me from going off until Slaver came online and killed me. It’s a risky plan and works most effectively if I am lacking Twiddle effects.
If any number of cards had been off by one, I could have simply gone off. The bottom line is that these games can go either way, depending on what a person draws or what they were lucky enough to start with. This plays into the need to have the most resilient, consistent, but above all powerful deck.
If the match-ups between the top decks are tight – often draw dependent and decided by a very narrow margin that is often as random as a flip of a coin – then you have to play the numbers. In most of my testing, Desire split with most of the top decks or had a slightly winning record. I suggest that you want to play the deck that is likely to break serve first, simply because it is the fastest and more powerful deck. General disruption is generally insufficient to stop Desire. And if it does, it requires immediate threats to back it up.
In those match-ups, you have to ask: am I willing to sacrifice a bit of consistency, if I have the better chance to win the metaphorical coin flip, and thereby snag the match? If you are, then Desire is a deck you should seriously consider. In any given match-up, made up of the best of three games, anything can happen – but with the most broken deck, you have the best shot at playing the numbers. Just to illustrate this point another way, consider the intensity of whether each player wants to go first. The Desire deck certainly wants to play first. But each opponent will want to play first even more because it may mean they only get one turn to disrupt the Desire deck, and thereby affect the game in a way that isn’t pure goldfishing.
Featured Game Five
Desire v. Kai’s Tinker
My opening hand:
Saprazzan Skerry,
Saprazzan Skerry,
Chrome Mox,
Twiddle,
Twiddle,
And Diminishing Returns
Turn One:
I drop Skerry and pass the turn.
Chris plays Rishadan Port and taps it for Voltaic Key.
Turn Two:
I untap Skerry and draw Burst of Energy. It’s time to go for it. I play Chrome Mox imprinting a Twiddle. I tinker up Gilded Lotus and Twiddle and Burst it to play Diminishing Returns with UUW floating.
I Returns into:
Grim Monolith,
Grim Monolith,
Ancient Tomb,
Trade Secrets,
Dream’s Grip,
Dream’s Grip,
Diminishing Returns.
I play Ancient Tomb, Grim, Grim and Grip my Lotus twice floating UUUUUUW4. Storm count: 8. I play Returns with Storm count 9 and UUUUW2 floating.
I draw Brainstorm, Meditate, Mind’s Desire, Diminishing Returns, Gilded Lotus, Twiddle, and Seat of Synod. I Twiddle the Lotus and leave it untapped while I cast Desire for 11. I won that turn. If Chris had gone first, he might have had a shot to use the Port to prevent me from going off as successfully as I did. My Twiddles would have helped, but would thereby take away mana from my Lotus. If I had twiddled the Skerry after he ported it, I would have had to Returns with a mere U floating after my Returns. While it would have been successful given how solid my draw was – I would have been far more hesitant to actually play the Returns.
If Desire gives you the best shot at playing the numbers, it bears emphasizing that it requires a lot more work, testing, and tuning to successfully play those numbers with Desire than it does with other decks. That’s why in the end, I will recommend that people play decks other than Desire. Before we go there, let’s take a close look at the key threats which Desire simply does not want to see.
Feature Game Six:
Desire v. Kai’s Tinker
My opening hand is:
Irrelevant.
Chris is playing first:
Turn One:
Ancient Tomb, Chalice of the Void at One. I scoop.
Kai’s Tinker deck has three maindeck Chalices. The possibility of Chris randomly drawing it and playing it on turn 1 is a serious threat. Its far worse than almost anything else they can play. You can win in such a scenario – which involves playing a long and tedious game in which your goal is to get a bunch of Twiddles countered by Chalice just to up the Storm Count. It is difficult to win before a deck like Tinker wins. If you are in a game 1 scenario, I do not recommend scooping until you see that the Tinker deck has the goods to follow it up – although your chances of winning remain slim.
Rather than have you sit through another sample game illustrating a rather simple point, you also have to recognize that Platinum Angel in game 1 is also game over. However, as I previously described, it’s a price I’m willing to pay with this deck. If your opponent invests in Tinkering up a very early Platinum Angel, but allows you to still get your engine going, there is a risk to your opponent that you have answers either in the form of Burning Wish, Cunning Wish or even maindeck bounce. Making the maindeck space for such an answer may then be unnecessary if your opponent suspects you are using those cards. And after game 1, you probably are using some form of bounce.
There are three other key threats this deck will have to face. The first is Stifle, which will be discussed later. The second is Wasteland.
Wasteland is a very strong card in this format. I would not be surprised if the rather successful Red Deck Wins sealed a sizable number of games with a well-timed Wasteland. When you are playing against Red Deck Wins, one of the keys to success is to remember how slow its clock is. A turn one Slith Firewalker means you are at ten by turn 4. You goal, then, is to play intelligently. Do not play your only Blue mana source or your only land on turn 1 unless you plan on going off that turn. If you have excess land, drop it to get them to use up their spells and to buy time while they try to destroy your lands instead of playing threats. I have found that it is not too difficult to simply wait until you can go off, then drop a Mox, and a Tomb/City or untapped Skerry and simply win. If they bring in Pyrostatic Pillar, you may just have to scoop.
The final threat is simply general artifact destruction whether it be Shatter, Rack and Ruin, Seal of Cleansing or whatever. These spells are very deadly and it is one of the reasons to not play this deck. If they time their spell properly, they can really hose you by destroying your Gilded Lotus.
There are scenarios when you can win without Gilded Lotus, but you need to be able to recognize them. Here is a feature game which illustrates this possibility:
Feature Game Seven:
Desire v. Kai’s Tinker.
Winning without Lotus
My mulligan hand of six was:
Chrome Mox,
Ancient Tomb,
Sapprazzan Skerry,
Brainstorm,
Twiddle,
And Mind’s Desire.
Turn One:
Chris drops a Seat of Synod and passes the turn.
I drop my Skerry into play and pass the turn.
Turn Two
Chris plays Port, and ports my Skerry on my upkeep.
In response I float UU. I go to my draw step and draw Dream’s Grip. I then use one of the Blue to Brainstorm into: Seat of Synod, Seat of Synod, and Skerry. Awful. I drop the Skerry and pass the turn.
Turn Three:
Chris plays City of Traitors and taps his lands for Tangle Wire.
At this point I need to lay this land that is on top of my library so I draw the Seat and play it.
Turn Four:
Chris taps down except for his Seat and passes the turn.
I tap down and play the 2nd Seat.
Turn Five:
Chris keeps his City up and Port up. He draws and plays Metalworker.
Steve:
At this point my board is Skerry, Skerry, Seat, Seat
I tap down both Seats to the Wire. I drop Ancient Tomb. I tap the Skerry with two counters on it and draw UU. I Twiddle it. I then tap both Skerries and have UUUUU in my mana pool. I play Ancient Tomb. I tap it. UUUUU2. I Dream’s Grip the Tomb. UUUU4. I drop two Chrome Mox making my Storm count: 5. I then play a Mind’s Desire for Five.
My Desire Reveals: Ancient Tomb, Trade Secrets, Gilded Lotus, Dream’s Grip, and Mind’s Desire. From there I am able to handily win. This demonstrates the raw power of unrestricted Mind’s Desire. Hitting another Mind’s Desire is like Berserking a Berserked creature – it is monstrous and exponential.
The very nature of Desire is what gives this deck some legs against Control decks. If you know they aren’t going to win very quickly and you build up some key storm to play a Desire there isn’t much they can do but hope to counter a key spell.
That finally brings us to
Building An Optimal Sideboard:
In general, the best thing you can bring to any given match isn’t just a good sideboard, but a familiarity with the match-up and thoughtful consideration of your sideboard options.
Recall in my discussion of in deciding what deck to play, I suggested that in any given match-up, you want to be the deck that is more likely to do the more broken things, and thereby be more likely to win first. Well, in the mirror match, two factors really come into play: your sideboard and your experience with the deck (and by extension your skill with the deck). Since this deck has no real discard or countermagic to protect its combo, it is relying on the natural resiliency of the combo. The deck itself is difficult to disrupt because it can blitz by the control decks before UU comes up, and because Storm itself is antithetical to the nature of blue-based control.
One card you don’t want to leave home without has to be Stifle. Stifle has many merits though – it’s pure gold against the Mindslaver lock deck as they have to sacrifice the Mindslaver and have invested ten mana into it all, just to be countered by your beautiful Stifle at a mere one casting cost – that’s tempo.
Returning the train of thought – all the reasons why this deck doesn’t have countermagic or disruption mean that Stifle becomes that much stronger. Getting around Stifle requires getting the combo going so that you have multiple avenues to win through, besides merely Mind’s Desire. Getting to that point means that you need to be past the first Desire and have plenty of resources going and plenty of spells to cast. A well timed Stifle stops the entire process.
Another thing you must understand about the mirror match is that both players are going to be using Diminishing Returns. As such, you will want plenty of Stifles to draw into – and then the game becomes who can win before the other player doesn’t get a Stifle, i.e. luck. I will try and go off using Returns, and you will Stifle it. You get a new hand with my Returns and try and go off, which I Stifle, and this will continue until one person doesn’t get Stifle. So having the most Stifle seems key to winning that match.
Beating Stifle is a more difficult endeavor. One way to beat Stifle is by overwhelming the opponent with threats – Mind’s Desires and other. This strategy requires slowing the game down a bit so you have sufficient mana to play multiple threats a turn. An alternate strategy is simply to Twiddle their land so they can’t play it.
Another card that you not only must fear, but abuse, is the incredibly powerful Chalice of the Void. It should be obvious that Chalice of the Void with one charge counter is a death threat for this deck. That reason alone is strong enough to consider running Platinum Angel and Rushing Rivers in the sideboard, since Chain of Vapor does not answer Chalice with one counter. Something that I haven’t tested yet is whether attempting to get a Chalice into play for two, and thereby making Chalice for one impossible, is a viable strategy given how much mana acceleration you have. I have a strong suspicion that the viability of this strategy will depend on who is playing and who is drawing. If you are playing, the chance of you getting four mana before they get to two and a chalice is much better.
Testing has proven that Chalice of the Void is simply way too strong to not have in the sideboard. In most respects it is in fact superior to Defense Grid, if you can believe it. Against the Tog and Oath decks, Chalice for two shuts down all the Scepter tricks, the draw engine, and many other goodies. Defense Grid doesn’t stop Boomerang on a Gilded Lotus. Chalice does. I recommend at least three Chalices in the sideboard, and perhaps even a pair of Defense Grids, one of which you can simply Tinker up.
Given the strength of the Belcher deck, it seems that the ability to Tinker out a turn 1 or 2 Damping Matrix to slow their game down, so that you have time to build up and evade Force Spikes, is potent. The Japanese suggested that four Damping Matrix is the correct number. Rather than dispute the creators of the deck, I will suggest four as well. It should also be remembered, that like Stifle, Damping Matrix shuts down Mindslaver and even Goblin Welders, making a Mindslaver lock impossible and forcing Osterberg’s deck to win through another route. However, if you don’t want four Damping Matrix, or if there isn’t room, I think Stifle is also an under-realized card in this match-up. Being able to Stifle an activation or two of a Belcher may be a great surprise and a huge tempo boost allowing you to handily win the following turn.
One Tendrils of Agony in the sideboard is not a terrible idea if there is a particular match-up, like the mirror for instance, where you expect that you will cast Diminishing Returns multiple times, or if you expect a lot of fast burn decks. Two other sideboard considerations put up by the creators is Thirst for Knowledge (which they sideboarded in against Tinker in place of the Trade Routes or Meditate) and Baleful Stare – which presumably would replace one of those cards as well. A turn 1 or 2 Baleful Stare against a mono-Red deck is almost certain to set you up for a combo on turn 3, but I am not convinced of the strength of the card.
In the first place, a mid-game Baleful Stare is probably anything but strong relative to Meditate or Trade Secrets, if you are in the process of comboing out and you reveal a Baleful Stare off a Mind’s Desire. In the second place, the Japanese designed their sideboard with an uncertain metagame going into the Pro Tour. Since the post-mortem on the event has produced a more coherent picture of Extended at the moment, it is possible the more marginal cards could and should be pushed out of the sideboard for more effective answers. Thirst and Stare might be such marginal considerations. Instead, I suggest that four Chill is an absolute necessity. Red Deck Wins has performed well around here and other places, and I am convinced it will continue to put up decent results. You need Chills to effectively shut down this deck while you go off.
I wish I had more time to present a closer look at other Extended decks because I find them interesting and fun to play. In the final analysis, I will be playing Desire because I believe that power and Speed, when well executed, has the best chance at destroying the field.
Despite the fact that I have presented some strong arguments for the Desire deck, I’d like to make a cold practical assessment of its chances. As I’ve said before, I do not expect the Desire deck to put up strong results. Its not because its too fragile or vulnerable to too much hate, its because I believe it requires a certain threshold of experience and effort that would, on the whole, be better spent exploring other decks.
For any of the extremely serious and passionately dedicated who wish to qualify in the remaining week of December, I would suggest either Hermit, Belcher, or Kai’s Tinker. Kai’s Tinker has the tools to deal with almost anything and the capacity to do well. It has no truly bad match-ups, and is inherently powerful in its own right. My fear of the deck centers around the fact that it doesn’t seal the deal. It sits around and draws cards while other decks go for the jugular. It also has weaknesses to the growing Red Deck Wins – particularly if they have maindeck Burning Wishes to fetch out Pulverize (something I suggest for serious consideration). Chills certainly help, but by no means solidifies the match. Things are uncertain. At least with Desire, the biggest problem is your own mana base, not the spells you might draw or the spells your opponent might play. In other words, Kai’s deck is just a tad too control-ish for my play – although I am certain it would have been a wise choice for a PTQ.
This brings me to my final lesson from Type One. There is another sense in which consistency is important. Success at the PTQs with the most powerful decks is often moderated by their ease of play. In the last few months, Worldgorger Dragon, a combo deck, has been tearing up the tournament scene. This is explained, in part, because it is naturally immune to Chalice of the Void. However, the key to its success is that it is a deck you can pick up the night before and win with. It is consistent, redundant, intuitive, and powerful. Once you get to a certain power threshold, then for most players, I suggest playing the deck that is intuitive, consistent, and redundant over the more marginal advantage of brutal power when the chance of miscuing or fizzling is high.
That brings me to Belcher and Hermit. Belcher has several huge advantages. First, it hasn’t earned a slot in the top 8 of the last Grand Prix, which should alleviate some sideboard pressure. Second, it is brutally consistent. Third, it has great disruption in the form of Duress. For the very serious player, I think Belcher is probably as good a choice as you can get. The only problem is getting hit by artifact hate – and this isn’t even that big of a problem as the capacity for the deck to find another Belcher is impressive. It also has a flexible set of answers that you might wish to bring in such as Angel or Mindslaver. The third deck I would recommend is the Hermit Druid deck. This deck has a lot of the consistency of the Clock but even more disruption. Because Druid, Tinker, and Belcher are already operating at an incredibly high power level, and because they have, for the most part, built-in consistency, I expect to see more of these decks in the top 8 than the Desire deck.
I hope you found these articles interesting and insightful. Good luck at the PTQs and have fun.
Stephen Menendian
[email protected]
Just as an informational notice, for anyone who is interested, The Soldiery in Columbus, Ohio is sponsoring a Type One tournament on December 28th.
Soldiery Inc – Northwest
4256 North High Street, Columbus, OH 43214
First place is an Unlimited Mox Sapphire with an English Mana Drain for second place. There will be some cool door prizes such as Dual Lands and other stuff. Proxies will be allowed and it will start at noon. Just to be clear, you don’t need to own the cards to play with the proxy. You can proxy your whole deck if you want, although printed pictures are strongly preferred. It will be swiss with a cut to top 8. December 28th come play in Columbus, Ohio. The entry fee is $15.