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Last week, in the Philosophy of Fire, I talked about the death of one of my pet decks. Though I had put considerable effort into the Big Red deck, its burial ended up being bearable for me because I had another Rogue deck that I liked even more. This deck was the culmination of dozens of hours of testing and tuning and theory in working with another designer for whom I have a lot of respect. He spilled the beans in his own column on another site, so I figure, especially if I am not playing the deck anyway, I’d write a more exhaustive article, talking about the development of the deck and how we came to the conclusions we came to.

Some of you probably wonder just how I spend my time when I’m not trying to disparage Standard and Limited Green. The answer is simple: I try to desecrate Ravager Affinity. In this case,”try to desecrate” is not synonymous with”succeed in desecrating.” I’ve gotten so desperate that I’ve even turned to that feeble multiplayer Magic fall-back, Cowardice, thinking that if I can’t stop Affinity players from winning, I might as well make winning as annoying as possible for them. Sadly, I realize that my hopeless squabble with the best deck in the metagame is of no concern to you. I know there’s a combo here somewhere, but since I can’t find it, I’ll indulge in one of the safest genres of Magic strategy writing: The Deck Update.

My past few articles have recapped the metagame. I’ll do that once more. In addition to the decks from previous Regionals, I have collected over one hundred top 8 decklists from Regionals that have occurred this month. That information is as current as anything you can get. It is time to decide what deck to play.

This week isn’t about a deck or that final sideboard card (although Black decks really need Echoing Decay for use against Soldier, Goblin, and Insect tokens). No, this is about being ready for The Regionals Experience.

I’ll make my introduction short here. I have a 1900 rating that is steadily climbing. I’ve played in three JSS tournaments this season, making two second-place finishes and a third-place finish. Don’t worry – I’m not about to present another awful”rogue” deck, but rather a guide to playing the best deck in Standard, for your Regionals encounter.

So why, you may ask, in an article called The Philosophy of Fire, are we talking about archaic deck archetypes and focusing on a card that is restricted in every conceivable format? The reason is that Necropotece gives the average player the most concrete understanding of the interaction between cards and life of any archetype or mechanism. The Philosophy of Fire will do the exact same thing, but instead of trading life for cards from your own deck, it speaks about the relationship of trading cards for your opponent’s life. Specifically, the goal will be to translate a hand into a dead man.