AuthorIain Telfer

Like anyone else I’ve been testing and making new decks. Of course by new decks, I mean I’m putting old cards backwards in cases and then scribbling (in my terrible hand writing) words like”extraplanar” and”chrome” on small pieces of paper and then slipping them in. This, combined with a testing partner, results in testing out new decklists… Which I will now give to you, my readers. Then I will talk about the decklists. Which were tested and observed, under fire from other decks. Deck that might also be terrible. I think this is the real fun of new format testing: All of your decks are garbage, but you don’t know that yet.

This deck was the real surprise to come out of the Championships, and is actually a lot more powerful than I initially felt it was. It feels very similar to Wake, with you tapping out for insanely powerful effects like Decree of Justice and Decree of Pain… But considering the deck’s eight Wrath effects punish you for playing creatures, encouraging you to hold them right in your hand where you can Therapy them out, it works really well together.

“Hunting Sound” is the pet name for the Hunting Grounds deck I played six months ago, re-applied to the updated U/G/w aggro mold. The deck was extremely aggressive, with almost no board control elements whatsoever. This made the deck somehow comforting to play. You either beat your opponent upside the face , or the deck just didn’t deliver and you’d shrug your shoulders to show your disdain for those overpriced fetchlands that don’t even fix mana 75% of the time.”Flooded Strand,” you’d remark,”Who needs ’em?”

Captivated by Mike’s brilliant writing, I gave his threshold-based deck a few spins on Apprentice; the basic wisdom learned from that matchup was that the deck was really inconsistent and weird at times. I discussed the deck with a friend of mine – somewhere between Flores’ deck and his, I think, lies the answer.

The Bird Deck does get a wonderful enchantment in the form of Soulcatcher’s Aerie. Admit it: 1/1 dorks are going to die. That’s about all they’re really good for, besides occasionally attacking for single points of damage. But no, dying is their skill! It’s their bad stylish ability. And the Aerie rewards you for having your stupid birds die in horrible, painful fashions. And that’s really what military strategy is all about: Stupid, annoying birds dying in droves.

I will freely admit I simply threw a Lavaborn Muse deck together and expected it to do hideously poorly. The thing is… The deck sort of surprised me. Lavaborn Muse did its job a lot better than I thought it would. Muse range is a great place to put your opponent. So with that in mind, I playtested the other four Muses to see how they did…

Slivers are one of the favorite”tribes” in Magic for a reason: They bridge the gap between casual and competitive players. A casual player can rave about Slivers, and Grumpy McTournamentman won’t walk over and smack him in the head. So let’s look at the Slivers and see which ones may be tournament-worthy and which ones are not, and then create some preliminary Standard decks to look at.