In the fourth installment of Peter’s series searching for tech in the bones of Extended seasons past, he examines the great set rotation of 2001 and then explores the new decks and old archetypes that arose, including many that you will see this coming season.
This is the third in a series of articles that chronicle the last several Extended seasons. As always, the roots of the current Extended season can be found in the past: with the exception of Ravager Affinity, all of the Pro Tour: Columbus decks have appeared, in some form or other, in years ago. Some go back a lot farther than you might think, and there’s still tech in them thar decks!
This is the second in a series of articles recapping past Extended seasons. Since all Extended seasons follow similar paths, this history is prequel to the new season that is about to begin, and many of the decks discusses here are the grandfathers of decks you will be playing in the weeks to come. Some may even have old-school deck that you can delve into to solve problem matches. This article is also interesting, in and of itself. Enjoy.
Extended Season is coming. Soon. Extended season always plays out about the same – the Pro Tour defines the early metagame, a new deck smashes the format, then hated-out decks resurface as the hate disappears. Old archetypes are rediscovered: the Life deck, for example, was played at GP: Las Vegas years ago. The past is relevant – it will define what you will play at the qualifiers. For this series, I will review each Extended season, one article at a time. I will look at the evolution of the metagame and highlight some of the defining decks. Then, since it is me, I’ll also discuss a few interesting decks that floated around
The Judgment Wishes are restricted in 5color (at least the good ones are), but the tradeoff is that 5color lets you wish for any card you can reach easily from your seat – provided that getting the card would not make your deck illegal. That means that you can keep a small pile of Wish targets around and play a lot of interesting cards. I want to talk about what I have in my pile.
I recently got my hands on some Unhinged cards, so I’ve been looking at integrating them into decks. Some are stupidly broken, some are just bleah, but some are actually pretty interesting. Unhinged is also a reasonable set for Limited purposes – something I did not really expect from a silver-bordered set. At the request of our editor, I decided to take a comprehensive look at the Limited, Constructed, and Multiplayer possibilities inherent in this fun new set and report my findings.
I’m going to kick a few hornets’ nests today. I think that everyone who has written about most challenging format gets it wrong, so I’m going to cover that. I will also discuss the whole issue of Contract from Below and ante in 5color. Abe Sargent has described banning Contract as the abortion issue of 5color — it raises heated debates, with zealots on both sides. Time to feed the flames.
We’ve got a two-part article here today. The first part describes the evolution of my current competitive 5color deck. The second part was going to be a further discussion of the problems with Contract from Below and ante, but I replaced that with a brief tourney report on making Top 4 in a 5color Worlds qualifier.
I could make a deck that could be quite competitive with the best in the format – but that would take including my power, all my duals and fetchlands, and stripping out all the “just for fun” cards and replacing them with cards that just win the game. But that would mean carrying a deck worth thousands and thousands of dollars that contained about three win conditions – and forcing one of them out game after game. I could probably win, but would it be fun?
State and Provincials has come and gone. It taught some lessons. Some we knew, some are new. Among those we knew – Affinity is still strong, Tooth and base-Green are good, and I can’t play worth sheet. The new lessons – Champions does have cards to add, and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker is anything but a trash rare.
There’s less than a week to go before States. You should have already chosen your deck. You should be very comfortable with it, and know it inside and out. You should have developed sideboarding strategies, and have a good idea of not only what comes in, but what goes out in each matchup. The worst mistake you can make, just before a major tournament, is to change decks. New decks are alluring, but you must resist the temptation. Unfortunately for you, I’m here to provide a heaping helping of temptation for those of you that like to play rogue decks. Looking for something off the beaten path? Follow me, my friends.
Peter kicks off States week by stretching his precognitive powers as far as they will go, and then delivers some helpful lessons for first-timers and veterans alike about what they should expect and be prepared for in the States metagame.
States is approaching. The forums are rife with decklists. I’m going to add a few — built around Sakura-Tribe Elder and Kodama’s Reach. This combination allows for some powerful mana acceleration. Right now, it has the same feel that my early Tooth and Nail decks had. How meaningful is that? Well, I wrote about T&N before it won any of the various National qualifiers… maybe I can stumble onto a golden Green deck before States this time as well.
Some deckbuilding basics this week. Some of you definitely need a refresher course. People are posting Kamigawa-based decks in the forums, including a few combo decks. Some are good. Some — well, we need to talk.
First, I’ll make the obligatory comments on Draft and Limited. The set looks like it’s more aimed at these formats. It has a lot of creatures with combat related abilities, lots of combat tricks, and the new Legends rule* makes Legends a lot more playable. This is not too surprising – we came off a block built around combo and Constructed play (although the Affinity mechanic proved excessive), so a more Limited-focused block was predictable. This isn’t Masques block II, however: Masques was all about horrible creatures with big price tags. CoK has some amazing 5/5s for bargain prices. In fact, let’s take a look under the hood and see exactly what Champions offers, shall we?
