Thundercats, No!

Just a note prior to reading this column, I had every intention of providing this column earlier, but my house caught on fire this past week and I was in a hotel for a few nights as a cleanup crew worked to help restore my home.

Regionals is soon to be upon us all and with that fact comes the rush of preparation. What deck to play? What will the field look like? Players begin scrutinizing every aspect of their deck and fine tuning their builds to meet the most optimal standards they can come by. It’s an exciting time but it’s also one packed full of frustration for those who have yet to make the decision on what to take into battle. Much like that paper assigned on Friday and due on Monday, the days and hours begin to fade fast. Before you know it, it’s the night before Regionals and you’re in your house or hotel room, on your computer, or sitting in a circle of friends asking everyone the same question. What do I play?

I’ve been there. Times were so bad once, that I took the advice of Brian Kibler and ran Thundercats (a deck utilizing the raw power of Scoria Cat he posted on The Sideboard). Here’s how the deck looked.

Thundercats

4 Scoria Cat

2 Flowstone Overseer

1 Tahngarth, Talruum Hero

4 Stone Rain

4 Pillage

3 Tectonic Break

3 Hammer of Bogardan

3 Earthquake

4 Seal of Fire

2 Ghitu Fire

4 Fire Diamond

2 Star Compass

Lands

4 Rishadan Port

2 Dust Bowl

18 Mountain

Sideboard

4 Boil

3 Lightning Dart

4 Flametongue Kavu

2 Flashfires

1 Earthquake

1 Tahngarth, Talruum Hero

I tweaked it some from the list Kibler offered up, but no manner of tweaking could have saved me from the kick-in-the-nuts I received from my first two opponents. I remember being upset with Thundercats and upset with myself, for not deciding on a deck with enough time to make my myself comfortable with it. My friends all laughed at me for playing the deck and to this day, I still catch hell for taking a deck off the Sideboard to Regionals.

Why did I choose the deck I did? Because I wanted to take something that could deal with the field. At the time, Rebels, Fires, Nether-Go, and U/W Control, made up the upper tier of decks. I expected the Regionals that year to be filled with mana intensive decks and having been a fan of going rogue in major tournaments, I attempted to create many designs that could work to exploit the strategies of the top decks. No matter what direction I took or what build I made, my rogue creations failed one after another. Then, in the last days before Regionals I discovered Thundercats. The deck had the land destruction concept that I wanted to be present in my deck and provided much more synergy than the creations I had built and tested. So why did I go 0-2 and drop?

I understood the format and what to expect but I neglected to understand my own deck. It can go both ways. You can have a complete and thorough understanding of the metagame and little understanding of the intricacies of your own deck or you can understand all the ins and outs of your deck, but fail to realize what your opponents will be playing. The people who win invitations to Nationals will be those who can accomplish both. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to do, but with the right amount of effort and input on your own end, you can make it.

What I would like to do in this column is to do my best to help identify what metagame you can expect and thus give you some insight into how you can better take on the format. Your part will be to do your best to playtest and familiarize yourself with the format and the deck you want to play. Before anyone runs off to the forums to tell me they obviously know the format, know their deck, and know all of the things I’m going to produce in this column, just slow down a second. Everyone may know that Tooth and Nail or Troll and Nail are the decks to beat, but that doesn’t mean they know what they might come to expect from the rest of the field.

For some insight into what we can expect as the dominant deck types I looked at the Top 8 decks from a few of the Japan Regionals. Japanese players have always been know for creativity in deck design and construction and I feel these lists will serve as a somewhat sound platform to begin exploring the metagame.

[Editor’s Note: Rather than force you to sort through 20 pages of decklists, we’ve provided links to most of the decklists here instead.]

http://memorylapse.xrea.jp/kung_fu_magic/archives/2005/06/top_8_decks.html

(56 players)

http://nekoyan.net/result/05/06/4.htm#2

(62 players)

http://magicdailynews.com/20050607.html

(39 players?)

http://magicdailynews.com/20050611.html

(113 players)

http://magicdailynews.com/20050612.html

(95 players)

http://magicdailynews.com/20050613.html

(125 players)

http://magicdailynews.com/20050614.html

(49 players)

Saviors of Kamigawa cards are not present in these lists, but that doesn’t mean we can neglect the value they provide in understanding the competition. What cards will Saviors of Kamigawa present? My first thought comes to two cards that could have the potential to alter the format- Pithing Needle and Thoughts of Ruin. Pithing Needle will provide a pain in the neck for many decks, especially MUC decks. Thoughts of Ruin is the proclaimed new “geddon”, but as Mr. Flores and others have found, the card isn’t Armageddon by any stretch of the imagination, but rather a high quality land destruction spell with minor drawback of tagging your own lands in the process. Adamaro in conjunction with Thoughts of Ruin seems to offer the best opportunity to abuse Thoughts of Ruin. Still, some other cards from Saviors will make it into decks. Here’s some cards you can expect to see.

Enduring Ideal

Manuel Bevand previewed a deck in one of his more recent columns over on MagicTheGathering.com. The deck utilizes Enduring Ideal to fetch for random solution enchantments. I’ve seen several builds of this deck and here’s one I’ve found to be much more competitive than most.

Enduring Ideal

Richie Proffitt

Test deck on 06-19-2005

Standard

Creatures (7)

Lands (23)

Spells (31)

The deck has the ability to lock the game down by dropping Zur’s Weirding and Honden of Cleansing Fire. This will result in eventually decking your opponent. The other win condition is Trade Routes and Seismic Assault to go straight to the dome. If anything, this deck provides a bit of fresh air to the format and could be the precursor for better things to come.

Promise of Bunrei

This card has White Weenie written all over it, but don’t be surprised if you find a few copies of this card looming in random G/B control decks, splashing just for this card. Its power combined with Death Cloud is effective and lethal. I, myself, have toyed around with this card and Phyrexian Plaguelord to form a B/G/w control deck. I utilized Grave Pact to try and develop board and card advantage. Here’s a rough list.

Lynch Mob (Revisited)

4 Phyrexian Plaguelord

4 Promise of Bunrei

3 Gravepact

4 Sakura-Tribe Elder

4 Birds of Paradise

4 Eternal Witness

3 Plow Under

3 Viridian Zealot

3 Greater Harvester

3 Sword of Light and Shadow

3 Sensei’s Divining Top

20 Assorted Land

2 City of Brass

1 Miren, the Moaning Well

A few friends of mine have been working with this deck and plan on using it in their prospective Regionals. I enjoy the deck, but feel that it needs finer tuning to get better numbers.

Kagemaro, First to Suffer

This guy so wants to be in the deck above, but I have this affection for the Greater Harvester and I like how he can bump with Kokusho or Iwamori and live to tell about it. Still, the ability for Kagemoro to handle Troll Ascetic is nice and something that can’t be overlooked. Putting down a swarm of insect from Beacon of Creation is pretty nice too. Chances are this guy will come packaged in some G/B Rock decks or MBC decks. Phyrexian Arena and/or Night’s Whisper really works wonders with Kagemaro.

Hand of Cruelty/Hand of Honor

Hand of Honor is another card that beckons to be played in random White Weenie decks. The only problem with him is that White is relying quick cheap flying guys to lead a path to victory. The inclusion of Thunderstaff into the sideboards of many decks has crippled that plan and maybe the number of 1/1’s in these decks needs to be reduced.

On a side note, I see so many of these decks running Savannah Lions, which is a good card. However, my beef with them is that they may be called lions but they sure die like kittens. Insect tokens, Eternal Witness, Sakura-Tribe Elder, illusion tokens, Wood Elves, Hearth Kami, Genju of the Spires, Viridian Zealot, and a few others, all trade with these mighty lions. So what do you replace them with? Tundra Wolves. Why not? When they’re getting bonuses from Glorious Anthem, they can keep a Troll Ascetic in check and without the bonus, not have to trade with that bunch of creatures up there I mentioned. Thank goodness White gets Pithing Needle as a way to deal with Engineered Explosives, but Thunderstaff will still cause this deck some problems. Anywho, onto the other hand.

The Hand of Cruelty will see far less play than his counterpart. Those who follow the footsteps of Tim Aten Rat Deck from the Invitational, will find the most use for this guy. Hand of Cruelty makes ninja tricks against White Weenie a lot less difficult to pull off. Not really much more to be said on him.

Skull Collector

In reference to Mr. Aten’s Rat Deck, many spawns have shown up that utilize Skull Collector and Ravenous Rats and Chittering Rats. Nekrataal provides another great creature to return. For right now, this is the only use you can get out of Skull Collector.

Manriki-Gusari

Have you seen the ridiculous amount of equipment floating around? If it’s Green and it’s aggro, then it’s got Jitte and Swords in it. My bet is that some smart monkeys are going to use this card outside of just the standard White Weenie decks, to combat the flood of equipment. Mono-Black aggro creations will find particular affinity for this card, but then again, they do get Pithing Needle now.

Tomb of Urami

It seems like I keep coming back to aggro Black, although this card could show up in MBC builds as an alternate win condition. Chances are the aggro decks will be the ones brave enough to pack this card and with Skull Collector showing up in these decks, the pain of getting mana from it, just goes away.

There are a few noteables that I haven’t mentioned, such as Ivory Crane Netsuke, Miren, the Moaning Well, Mikokoro, Center of the Sea, and Oboro, Palace in the Clouds.

Okay, so we have an idea of what cards Saviors will produce for play at Regionals and we have an abundant source of fairly recent decklists to get a good feel of the metagame. Incorporating the Saviors cards into these decklists will probably be an easy process. All that’s left is to identify the decks that people want to keep on the down low. These are the decks that don’t receive much attention and are considered the “tech decks” to play. Do I know them all? Of course not, but I can identify decks that aren’t getting much coverage but are pretty good decks.

Mono-Black Control

3 Solemn Simulacrum

3 Kokusho, The Evening Star

1 Kagemaro, First to Suffer

1 Ink-Eyes, Servant of Oni

4 Chrome Mox

3 Consume Spirit

4 Pithing Needle

1 Death Cloud

3 Diabolic Tutor

2 Hideous Laughter

1 Night of Souls’ Betrayal

3 Persecute

4 Phyrexian Arena

3 Distress

4 Terror

1 Rend Flesh

Lands

1 Miren, the Moaning Well

1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All

1 Shizo, Death’s Storehouse

2 Blinkmoth Nexus

15 Swamp

Sideboard

2 Boseiju, Who Shelters All

4 Cranial Extraction

2 Hideous Laughter

1 Night of Souls’ Betrayal

1 Persecute

1 Distress

4 Sun Droplet

What better way to deal with a flood of G/x and Red aggro decks, than good ole’ MBC. This deck may look familiar to anyone who attended the Last Chance Qualifier in Philadelphia. It’s roughly the same build that Matteo Benedetto took to a Top 8 finish. This deck is strong and powerful and could see some changes. Cards like Guardian Idol are up for consideration and some versions are up for running Ivory Crane Netsuke to offset the life loss from Phyrexian Arena. To quote my editor…

“…Ink-Eyes and Persecute are ridiculous as singletons but absolutely deadly in combination.”

Erayo Law

Erayo, Soratami Ascendant looks like an innocent enough card, but when you put it in conjunction with small casting costs, some affinity artifacts, and Rule of Law, you get a nasty lock that doesn’t allow you to win.

Gifts Decks

Gifts Ungiven made its presence known in Philadelphia by Gadiel and Kenji. Recently the deck has taken a new approach into standard, by incorporating the brokeness of Eternal Witness. Some variants like to stick to the core of the block versions and run the Hana Kami engine. I feel the most success will come from the five-color Green variations on the deck.

Urzatron Blue

Quentin Martin mentioned this deck in a previous column and if you look around the forums or on MODO, you’ll run across people piloting this deck. It incorporates the Urza land mana engine with the ability to setup a continual Mindslaver lock. If any deck makes a surprising splash I would bet it would be this one. Here’s a list from the Kobe Regionals to look at.

Matsumoto Masataka 3rd

Urzatron Blue

4 Solemn Simulacrum

3 Triskelion

1 Arcbound Reclaimer

3 Sensei’s Divining Top

3 Oblivion Stone

3 Mindslaver

1 Skeleton Shard

1 Staff of Domination

4 Mana Leak

4 Condescend

4 Serum Visions

4 Thirst for Knowledge

1 Fabricate

11 Island

1 Swamp

4 Urza’s Power Plant

4 Urza’s Mine

4 Urza’s Tower

Sideboard

4 Echoing Truth

3 Quash

2 Time Stop

2 Icy Manipulator

4 Sun Droplet

Reanimator

Who doesn’t love putting fatties on the board with the quickness? I know I do. Ideas Unbound lends a helping hand to this deck. A continual volley of huge beasts come courtesy of Zombify, Trash for Treasure, and Beacon of Unrest. This isn’t really talked about too much, but the deck packs a punch and is just slick enough to slip under the radar. Did I mention no one is really using graveyard control, outside of Samurai of the Pale Curtain?

Reanimator

Richie Proffitt

Test deck on 06-19-2005

Standard

Creatures (12)

Lands (19)

Spells (29)

And so I conclude my column, designed to help you prepare for Regionals. I’m sure most everyone has a deck in mind by now, but as always, you’re going to have those who wait up until the last moment. Don’t let that person be you.