Mirrodin amazes me. Now that I can finally know for sure what it is that I am looking at, I am more eager than ever to tear into the shrink-wrap of a few unopened packs and start building decks. But I need something to test my weirdo decks against! Yeah, I’m looking way ahead all the way to Mirrodin-legal Standard… If Miss Cleo can do it, so can I. But before I can build a rogue deck to beat a metagame, I have to predict what I think that metagame will be….
You might have drooled the first time you saw Platinum Angel. After all,”don’t lose” was the cornerstone of the original”The Deck” philosophy. That is, by focusing on simply not losing, you can wear your opponent down and later outpace him in resources, and overwhelm him. That philosophy, however, isn’t absolute gospel in today’s far, far faster Type I. In many cases, the best way not to lose is to simply win first, especially when any single deck is hard-pressed to deal with all the many possible ways of losing. That leads us to the Angel’s fundamental problem: It stops you from losing, but it doesn’t help you win.
elsewhere. However, if you want to read my long-winded account of how I won my first PTQ in San Diego on September 13th, then by all means, continue. It was to be the last qualifier of the season, where four of my five top 8’s have come from… So it was time to roll out something new. So I decided to play one of the original decks of the format: Beasts.
So I ended day two at 10-4 and I went 3-3 on the day, finishing in the top thirty-two and gaining my first pro point. I have absolutely no regrets about what I played at the Grand Prix. I performed much better then I expected and lived out a scrub’s dream on my way to day two. This deck is so fun that it should be illegal by copyright infringement.
With all the excitement about artifacts this week, I decided to move up a feature of an artifact-based deck. Since fellow Paragon Steve Menendian already drew the Growing ‘Tog feature and I couldn’t find other notable Stax players like Matthieu Durand, I pulled a couple of very exciting games against someone you probably don’t know. Today, we welcome Guillaume Cardin, a student from Montreal. While he enjoys Type I, his higher-profile achievements include piloting U/G Madness to the quarterfinals of the last Canadian Nationals….
I’ll do the responsible thing and issue a warning: This article, like nearly all my articles, contains links to scantily-clad women. It may also contain references to and stories about sex, marijuana, alcohol, and sundry other adult concepts. It is meant to be read by fine, upstanding adults who would never dream of emulating any of the lunacy that may or may not occur as part of the events depicted here. If these sorts of things don’t appeal to you, then feel free to hit your”Back” button and seek out other, more palatable authors with names like”Bennie Smith,””Anthony Alongi,” and”Peter Szigeti.” I promise I won’t be offended.
As for the rest of you… Come on in.
Of course, invariably the person who is writing the walkthrough wins the draft, which just serves to make the whole thing look rather contrived. But if people are reading the walkthroughs to learn, then surely it would be far more useful to read about drafts where things didn’t go according to plan. Writing about a draft where everything goes perfectly is like writing a software manual without a troubleshooting guide. You’re basically saying,”This is what should happen; if it doesn’t, then you’re on your own.”
This is my draft. It didn’t work out. Let me tell you why.
Looking at my card pool, it was tricky to build a deck. I had some powerful cards, but not enough and what I had was somewhat lacking in synergy. Basically I had two choices. Firstly, I could play my best twenty-three U/W cards along with seventy land, giving me a deck with decent mana but with some bad cards and capable of very indifferent starts. Alternatively, I could go the U/W/r route and have a deck of mostly powerful cards that lacked synergy, all held together by a shaky mana base….
When playing in the mirror, we found that the more streamlined Goblin build would generally beat the”beefier” build. So I went for the quicker approach, adjusting the sideboard so I could downshift as needed, depending upon the matchup. Goblin Pyromancer replaced Starstorm, which was our own little bit of tech. There are definitely times where Starstorm is the better card… And there are times where giving all your Goblins +3/+0 for an alpha strike and/or serving as a Tivadar’s Crusade works, too. My results with the card were mixed….
In Part I of this article, I discussed the why and how of rogue decks, and provided some general rules for their construction. Now I’ll build one, to provide a practical example of the process. The trick was to find a rogue deck concept that hasn’t been thoroughly discussed in articles and forums already. I think I have one: Intruder Alarm, Squirrel Nest, and something to animate lands, like Vivify. So what happened when I tested this deck in a modern Standard environment, what were the two pitfalls I had to avoid – and how did the deck turn out?
