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If the Regional championships were being held this weekend, do you know what deck you would be playing? Is it going to be something fun because you’re a casual player that likes to cast Eater of Days and Stifle the come into play ability? How about something aggressive so you can maximize the amount of relaxation you get in between rounds of the grueling all-day tournament? Whatever you choose to play at Regionals, you have to be well informed, and hopefully I can present to you a version of Astral Slide that has been devastating in my own testing.

Unless you have been hiding under a rock for about four months, you will know that the new and upcoming net-deck is Affinity. Those of you who kept track of Kobe progress will undoubtedly notice the high Affinity concentration, and more important, Skullclamp in Affinity. If you thought Skullclamp was good before, watch what happens when you throw it in a deck that casts half of its creatures for free.

Of course, that is Block Constructed, and this is Standard. While there are similarities, there is one card that makes a world of difference.

I’ve been toying with Centaur Glade ever since it popped up in Onslaught. Anyone who played against it or with it in Limited knows how good it can be. It never made a splash in Constructed, though. It was too slow. Boy, oh, boy, does it give control decks fits, though. If you can resolve one against a control deck, you can hold all of those spells in your hand and make them deal with uncounterable 3/3 Centaur tokens. That’s nothing to sneeze at. The question remained: How can I make this card work? The answer always eluded me… until now.

Nonbos are combos that almost work, but are either too slow or too inconsistent to win anything – at least, not every match in a long tournament. So, you ask, why should I read an article about combos that don’t work? Two reasons. First, knowing this may help you understand what a Regionals opponent is trying to do to you – at least in rounds one and two. These combos are good enough that people will try them. Second, I have wrongly called combos nonbos in the past. That means that there is a chance that I have the core of a real deck, but it just needs a little tuning.

So what you have with Skullclamp is a whole lot of people who know how good it is going to be and a smaller – but still substantial – number of people trying to figure out how to beat it. The thing is, you can’t necessarily go up against a Skullclamp and attack it directly. That’s like trying to play a G/W deck full of Uktabi Orangutans and Monk Realists in an attempt to beat Trix. Sure, you can technically destroy their relevant permanents, but you can’t do so in a timely enough manner for it to matter.

People, I’ve got Death Cloud on my mind like Georgia. A lot of the decks I’ve been cooking up lately have been trained on finding the proper combination of Magical Cards that turn an otherwise symmetrical spell into a one-way trip down Broken Street. There are two particular builds that I’m working with right now — one mono-Black and one Black/Green.