Three decks from Dave’s testing gauntlet – including one further refined, with playtesting results and feedback from readers. Wanna see the Meddish U/B Wizards deck? No? How about a Burning Bridge deck that’s all the Rage… Or maybe not, now that it can’t PLAY Rage? All right, will another Mono Black deck satiate you?
Lo and behold! States, the favorite tournament of scrubby Pro Tour wannabes such as yours truly, is coming up shortly. And it’s never too late (or too early) to start thinking about what deck I’m going to play this year. May I present two decks for your pleasure?
Dave gives his tips on the current metagame – including some dead-on advice about what you currently need to play mono-black, including one card you’re just a durned fool if you don’t run it.
I’d settled into mono-black, as we’d gotten a version that we felt could handle U/G and wasn’t that bad against G/W either. I’d started with the strangler-heavy”Snarf Black” and morphed it into this version, called”Desperado.” Originally it was”Disco Strangler,” but when I took the stranglers out, I needed a new Eagles song to use.
WonderWurm pretty much crushes everything we’ve thrown at it. It’s a beatstick and a half, and can kill by turn 5 pretty regularly. However, how it fares against the various weenie white variants has yet to be determined with a fair amount of certainly.
In OBC alone, there are at least four solid U/G decks I can count:”Mongrel Madness,” U/G Upheaval, Quiet Roar, and lately I’ve seen a bounce-heavy variant running Wonder, Elephant Guide, and Cephalid Constable. All share similarities, but have enough differences to be considered unique.
Everyone’s trying to fix TurboLand, and I find Zvi’s deck a little too dependent on one victory condition – so of course I tweak it. But then again, I can come up with a Miracle-Gro decklist that Just. Might. Work.
It’s degenerate. It’s broken. It will require immediate bannings to keep Standard from being imbalanced… Or so the pundits have said regarding Quiet Speculation, which has the potential to make a degenerate triumvirate with Deep Analysis and Roar of the Wurm.
With the influx of powerful new white and green cards in Judgment, the question of the day becomes: Will W/G be any good in Standard?
The Sexiest Man In Magic takes Itchy and Scratchy to Regionals! What’s Itchy and what’s Scratchy? And how did Dave do?
I’ve been playtesting so much that I’m seeing Braids in my sleep… And she’s starting to look pretty darn good. Help me before I start making passes at Empress Galina!
Frog in a Blender is quick, but is too prone to manascrew. Classic R/G Beats is great, but lacks Torment’s excellent red. Can we combine the (Crunchy) Frog Peanut Butter with the chocolate beatdown?
The more I test, the more I feel that decks that have good card drawing engines to get them to what they need may be the way to go for Regionals this year
Dave’s amazing tourney report. (Well, I may not have invented it, but I popularized it: The Ferrett)
So what are my early impressions of Torment? It reminds me of Planeshift – a great middle-set for drafting, but not a lot of what I would call”chase” cards for the Constructed environments
