I have a rogue streak.
I’m not surprising any of you with this statement (I hope). Truth is, I should probably netdeck more. A lot more. But the fact of the matter is that I enjoy deck building and trying to figure out what cards I should play just as much as I enjoy actually playing the game of Magic itself. For example, I played Planeswalkers at States this past year. Not the most established of archetypes, but one that I really enjoyed building and playing all through my preparation for the tournament. I could have just as easily taken Faeries or Kithkin or some such nonsense, but that’s not how I roll. Even when I do take an established deck, such as when I played Kithkin all through last Block season, I tend to tweak it to such an extent that the initial deck isn’t anywhere near the finished product.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at the current Extended metagame.
Barring any bannings, there is a somewhat established hierarchy of what decks are viable. First on this list is Elves-with-an-exclamation-point, which as you all know put a number of decks into a Top 8 not seen since Faeries at last year’s StarCityGames.com $5000 Standard Open, and not seen at a Pro Tour since Tinker (or possibly Affinity). It’s tough to argue against Elves! as the top dog in the format going forward. That isn’t to say that many other decks aren’t viable. Tezzerator, Zoo, and Faeries all made their marks as well. This isn’t even to mention things like Next Level Gifts and Dredge, whose potential hasn’t even been fully explored yet.
So what deck am I playing?
None of the above, of course.
Creatures (11)
Lands (18)
Spells (31)
A little back story: last Extended season I played this deck for two or three weeks after it was debuted by Kuan-Kuan Tian and Team On The Bubble, hence its original name ‘Bubble Hulk.’ I loved the deck and had a ton of fun with it. At the end of the season a few other people across the Midwest whom also played the deck, namely Tim Morrison and Derek Mong but also a few others, wanted to figure out a way to make the deck work in the new Extended with the rotation of some of the mainstays. The cards from the old deck that rotated out were Careful Study, Living Wish, Cabal Therapy, the Invasion sac lands, and a few others, all of which were pretty difficult to replace. We discussed a few lists on Facebook for the next month or so before we basically gave up and moved on.
Flash forward to the PT. Oskar Skold, a Swedish player who didn’t play the Tezzerator deck, brought a very similar list to Berlin (which is where the inspiration for the above list came from) and thankfully made Day 2, making the list available to the public. He made a few interesting choices in his 75 (like a singleton Eerie Procession to find either Through the Breach or Peer Through Depths) that I consolidated into an almost entirely 4-of list. After a few tweaks and some sideboard overhauling I came up with the above list.
Skold’s new vision of the deck was a breath of fresh air, eschewing many of the interactions of the old version because of choice card rotations. Without Careful Study or Cabal Therapy, Footsteps of the Goryo became much worse. Without the Wish package to worry about, even more spaces freed themselves up. In their place he added the combo all-stars Peer Through Depths and Ponder. To top it all off, he added the most brilliant piece of technology in the deck: Gigadrowse.
A few words on Gigadrowse. This card is not only a neo-Time Walk on the second or even the third turn against almost every deck in the format, it’s also a great way to tap out all the Blue mana on the opposing side of the table at end of turn or prevent a lethal Zoo or Affinity attack. Not only that, but the Replicated copies cannot be countered by Chalice of the Void. It’s just a great all around card for this deck.
Luckily, each of the actual combo pieces themselves, the creatures, remained post-rotation. For those of you who don’t know, the combo works like this:
Step 1: Get Hulk into play via Through the Breach
Step 2: At end of turn, Hulk dies due to Through the Breach. Hulk triggers.
Step 3: Search up Body Double and Carrion Feeder with Hulk’s ability. Body Double copies Hulk.
Step 4: Sacrifice the fake-Hulk (Body Double) to Carrion Feeder to put a +1/+1 counter on Feeder. Hulk triggers.
Step 5: Search up Reveillark and Mogg Fanatic with Hulk’s ability.
Step 6: Sacrifice Mogg Fanatic to deal 1 damage to target creature or player.
Step 7: Sacrifice Reveillark to Carrion Feeder. Reveillark triggers.
Step 8. Bring Body Double and Mogg Fanatic from your graveyard to play with Reveillark’s trigger. Body Double now copies Reveillark.
Step 9: Repeat steps 6-8 ad infinitum, now with Body Double acting as fake-Lark throughout.
With this combo, you can deal infinite damage with Mogg Fanatic in single points, allowing you to take out annoying or possibly troublesome creatures like Burning-Tree Shaman, True Believer or what have you.
As the season goes on, it may be entirely possible that cards like Sudden Death or Sudden Shock will be used for one reason or another. If this becomes the case, replace the last 4 steps from above with these:
Step 6: Sacrifice Reveillark to Carrion Feeder. Put Feeder trigger on the stack.
Step 7: Sacrifice Mogg Fanatic to deal 1 damage to target creature or player in response to Feeder trigger.
Step 8: Reveillark trigger resolves. Bring Body Double and Mogg Fanatic from your graveyard to play with Reveillark’s trigger. Body Double now copies Reveillark.
Step 9: Carrion Feeder trigger resolves, getting it a +1/+1 counter.
Step 10: Repeat.
The reason why you do it in this order is that now you are not vulnerable to someone taking out your Carrion Feeder mid-combo. By sacrificing the Reveillark first, even if they kill the Carrion Feeder you can now get it back with Reveillark’s already on the stack trigger instead of getting blown out by a Sudden Shock in response to the Mogg Fanatic.
So now that that’s out of the way, the big question: Why am I playing this deck? There are a few reasons. Chief among them is that this deck has a similar clock to the Elf deck. Incredible Hulk is able to go off by turn 2 about 15-20% of the time and by turn 3 40-45% of the time when no disruption is present. That may seem slower than the Elf deck, but remember that I have 5 cards in my main deck, the playset of Gigadrowse and the single Mogg Fanatic, that can slow the elf deck down by a turn if need be. Second, there is no more graveyard hate in the environment. No longer do Leylines of the Void, Extirpates or Tormod’s Crypts inhabit sideboard slots because of the boogeyman Dredge, allowing this deck to roam much freer than it had last season. Third, it avoids much of the hate actually being played in the format. With sideboards being filled up by Pyroclasm, Engineered Explosives, Chalice of the Void, Pyrostatic Pillar, and other nonsense it is much easier for this deck to handle properly. Even cards that have a tangential effect on Hulk, like Ethersworn Canonist and Grand Arbiter Augustin IV, can be easily played through if played correctly.
Lastly, it’s unexpected. Even though Hulk made several Top 8s last season, it is still fairly under the radar. I anticipate that most players at any given PTQ won’t really know what’s going on until you kill them. They’ll think that a simple burn spell or a timely Putrefy or Smother can stop the combo when, in actuality, it can’t. The reason for this being that you have multiples of each creature in your deck, so even if they manage to kill a Carrion Feeder or take care of your Reveillark with a Snakeform or something equally unlikely then you can continue comboing out uninhibited.
However, there are some bad situations that go along with this deck as well. Incredible Hulk is very susceptible to discard, and in particular Thoughtseize, which can take a Hulk or any non-creature combo piece. This is the same for Vendilion Clique. These types of cards obviously slow the deck down a great deal. Similarly, without a Gigadrowse, Hulk is susceptible to countermagic. While not as damning as discard, since a few of the most popular counterspells like Spell Snare and Spellstutter Sprite have trouble even touching any of the business spells, it can still be very difficult to win facing down some untapped Islands. The most difficult way to win comes when you are playing against Gaddock Teeg. With Teeg on board you are basically resigned to the beatdown plan, trying to cast 4/3 fliers and 6/6 dudes that they can’t deal with (or else you just combo out anyway).
In my testing, this list has been very good in the current metagame, mostly due to the lack of effective disruption against this type of deck. Decks like TEPS have been shoved aside because their Elvish combo counterparts are so much quicker. So as long as long as decks like Doran are shoved out in turn by Elves!, Zoo, Tezzerator and Faeries I believe that Hulk can definitely be a player in the upcoming Extended PTQ metagame.
Thank for reading!
Reubs
Reuben Bresler
Reubs in the forums
[email protected]
CleverMonikerMan on AIM
Current Playlist:
Jack White and Alicia Keys — Another Way to Die
The Killers — Human
Credence Clearwater Revival — Effigy
The Smiths — Vicar in a Tutu
Young Jeezy ft. Nas — My President