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The deck I’m going to talk about plays Lightning Rift. This deck also plays Fireball, Starstorm, and Slice and Dice. It also plays crazy cards like Choking Tethers and… Cowardice. And in the right metagame, it just might be good!

After careful analysis into what makes the top decks tick, I crafted a decklist that seemed to be strong against the format, generating decent-to-good matchups with all of the other top decks. Balancing the deck was by far the most difficult issue of the bunch, seeing as how having game against both Goblins and Affinity is difficult enough, but throw in Slide and other White-based control decks, and you really have an awful lot to prepare for when deckbuilding.

All this talk of metagames, environmental details, and even the rogue deck articles I’ve done the past couple of weeks demanded that I lay out my actual Regionals experiences to see how my expectations of environments lined up with what I actually hit. I think the answers are surprising.

Basically, this deck takes the best deck from Onslaught Block and improves it significantly with powerful cards from Mirrodin Block. In contrast, both Goblin Bidding and Ravager Affinity are basically decks constructed from one block. In addition, if you read about the Bidding decks, you’ll see over and over again that even the people who play them admit that the Bidding itself is rarely that good in important matchups. I know it is cool to bring back lots of Goblins, but leave the ever so clever combos to decks which need to rely on such tricks to win. Red decks don’t need that nonsense to win.

Ravager Affinity is not an unstoppable Juggernaut. It is not the end of Type II. It does not define the format. Defining a format takes more than Ravager Affinity has got. To prove that, I’ll give you some decklists that wreck Ravager, but first, some metagame musings.

Last Saturday, I had the pleasure of running one of the first English Nationals Qualifiers in the country. The turnout was lower than expected, so only forty-nine players sat down in round one, giving the lucky top six players a chance to go to the English this year. Perhaps the most interesting tidbit I have to share with you from this qualifier is that not a single Ravager deck qualified in Bath. It was hated right out of the game.

I’d explain what’s in this deck, but you probably wouldn’t believe me anyway. Let me just ask instead whether you like taking lots of Time Walks in Type 2? Do you also like to do large amounts of damage directly to your opponent’s dome? Perhaps you just wanted to find a deck where you could finally abuse Serum Powder? Check inside if you find yourself at all intrigued, but please God, don’t play this deck at Regionals!