Old Extended had some broken decks, but nothing like Type 1. I play TnT – Mishra’s Factories, Juggernauts, Su-Chi’s, Triskelion, plus the broken stuff: Ancestral Recall, Goblin Welder, Survival of the Fittest. I’m short one Factory, but the deck still does okay.
For those that don’t know, you need an Enchantress or Enchantress’ Presence in play and a couple of one casting-cost Enchantments out along with a Words of Wind. You play an enchantment and trigger the card drawing, then pay one to turn it into a bounce instead of drawing a card. But Deep Dog had a very hard time of losing if they got a Wild Mongrel on the table and a Basking Rootwalla in their hand….
The basis behind this entire deck lies in one sentence found in the text box of four of the deck’s creatures:”At the end of each turn, put a (+1/+1, regeneration or other) counter on (creature)”. What this means is that the creature in question doesn’t have to be in play at the time a creature goes to the graveyard in order to get a counter – hence, Wrath of God and Living Death can be followed up by a freshly-cast Ghoul and it will still get the counters!
Black has great creature removal and hand destruction. Blue has card drawing and counterspells. Green has huge cheap efficient creatures. Red has burn and land destruction. And White? Well, White has weenies, and good weenies alone aren’t a good enough reason to want to play white.
For most Limited tournaments in the past, the preparation has been just that: Limited. But Chicago is different from many of the major Limited tournaments I’ve participated in during my Magic career, because I have a very solid and defined plan. And I’m going to allow you guys to take a look at the terms of my complete and actual plan for Pro Tour: Chicago. We can argue about White another day – if it still sucks after Legions.
Follow Sideboard’s live coverage while cheering on all of your favorite StarCityGames.com writers… Rob Dougherty, Michael Pustilnik, Mike Turian, Sol Malka, Nick Eisel, Ben Ronaldson, Ken Krouner, Nate Heiss and Geordie Tait! And while you’re at it, cheer me on for getting snowed in and not being able to make the trip. Sigh.
Look, your test group might think that life gaining is fun – but excuse me, I know no such people. And it’s not for lack of idiots; there are quite the group of morons at my store. So do not blame it at that I am a too”Johnny: kind of player. Timmy hates life gaining too – at least over here in the Netherlands.
He won our New Orleans contest and we flew him down there… And by God, he’s going to tell you what happened! Wanna hear about his unprecendented 4-1-1 run? How about the Osyp-and-Antonio show on Bourbon Street? His drinking escapades? How about how Ted Knutson showed his… Hell, you’ll just have to read it.
Many people – well, a few, anyway – noticed that I didn’t do a piece last week. The reason is simple. I was still recovering from my trip to Grand Prix New Orleans! You see, the StarCity folks found out that I had gone to Tulane and hadn’t been back in fifteen years… So they thought that I’d like the trip. Plus, they wanted me to be a tour guide of sorts. How could I say no?
At Nationals last year, I started trading for the Power Nine. Being a judge, you get those nice judge foils and boxes for judging at Pro Tours and Grand Prix – but no old cards. At Reims, I managed to get the last part: A Mox Ruby. Now all I had to do was wait for the new year before I could play with my goodies.
Peasant Magic’s rules are very simple: The only cards allowed are commons from any set (which does include Portal, Unglued, and so forth), and you can also have up to five of any uncommon. No banned list, no restricted list. So simple, so elegant. And ultimately, so wrong.
This is not an archetype to be glossed over. Extended is not nearly the insanely fast format we knew years ago. There is plenty of time for a lock-type deck to operate, and this one is incredibly powerful.
Justice, Finkel, Buehler, Long, Maher – the list of Magic Players who owned the Pro Tour in the past is a nice short one. Right now, only one man rules the Pro Tour and everyone knows his name: Kai Budde.
The deck is surprisingly good, better than I certainly expected. In our testing, it was no worse than 50/50 vs. Rock and U/G Madness, ate Sligh for lunch and gave Oath decks fits. This was before these improvements.
I had put together a synthesis of Rock and Oath I called”Black Oath” back in early December – and I think, in time, it would have become Kibler’s build. That’s sad. With that in mind, here are three decks that I’ve only done some light playtesting on, but I think they have potential.
