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It is in the mind of almost every single rogue (“bad”) deck designer to one day discover an archetype, to be the man with their name in lights, and the one who gets to bequeath a stupid name upon a deck and hear people recite it whenever they chat about matchups. It’s a pipe-dream, of course, since enthusiasm and a lust for glory only make up a small fraction of good deck design, with hard work, skill, and an ability to play the game as well as build for it make up the majority of the rest.

Evan Erwin was on-site when the new Solar Pox deck won the StarCityGames.com $1,500 Standard Open – and he got it all on video! Today’s article sees this incredible deck face off against opponents in Round 7, and both the quarter- and semi-finals! Thinking of playing this deck at Champs this weekend, and wanting to learn how to play the deck from first-hand successes? Come look and see!

Last week was another Lava Blister of a Quicken Hits column. Sorry about the fact that there wasn’t a lot of Super Secret Tech, what with States coming up. Give me an Honorable Passage, though; you don’t Peek at my column for Tek. You come here for the Cheap Ass decks. Like Zombies! 2k6, the deck that I Predict-ed that I would play at States. This Surprise Deployment really Outmaneuver-ed some folks. For many, there was a simple Wave of Indifference. Today’s column is for those with a Thirst for Knowledge, those who want to know what makes Zombies run like Clockwork Gnomes.

Yesterday, I laid down the rules — of sifting through old decklists, seeing what goes missing, and seeing what can fill those holes — and started work on Snow Dad. Snow Dad lost its entire engine, so it becomes a very different deck in the exchange — other decks are far more subtle shifts. We lost a card advantage engine, so we’ll use a new one — the rebel toolkit.

Evan Erwin was on-site when the new Solar Pox deck won the StarCityGames.com $1,500 Standard Open – and he got it all on video! Watch interviews with Ken Adams, the deck’s creator, as well as a complete video of both games of the finals! You want to see how Solar Pox rebounds from having one of two Haakons Castigated out of the game, then having the rest of his hand Persecuted? Watch and see!

Time Spiral has brought back a lot of old cards. Some had a glorious past. Some had flashes of greatness. Some are, well, Squire. We’ll ignore Squire, and look at the tournament history of the other Timeshifted cards instead. The question, of course, is whether any of these are going to make a comeback at States, or in Extended this fall.

We’re going to take a dance through some old decks — casual decks — and see what the transition has brought. Now, there are going to be a lot of articles like this in the coming months. Untested, undeveloped, casual decks, that are basically all just showing the really aware what not to do. For the rest of us, there’s still some good to it, because how we’re going to screw up is as important as what we’re going to get right.