Not strictly funny, nor full-blown strategy, Doctor Mox uncomfortably straddles the fence between both. Today your Magical Problem Practitioner provides a guide to the Extended format that’s accessible by all players competitive to casual.
We decided to switch things up today and step away from the established metagame into the realm of the rogues. How does a deck like Dump Truck stack up in this very diverse and hard-to-predict environment? JMU has tested it and the evidence is not as bad as you might think.
Continuing our two-week long Extended blow out, today we bring you Gadiel Szleifer, “Magic’s latest teenage bad boy.” Who better to guide you through the ins and outs of Reanimator for the upcoming PTQ season than the kid who took it to the Pro Tour Top 8?
So much more than an article about under-represented Extended Goblins decks, Sculpting the Perfect Hand introduces the idea of breaking the rules of Standard Operating Procedure in order to reverse a locked board or break through from a nearly hopeless game position. Integrating the tools of strategic plan development over the course of a decision-ridden game, this article also synergizes the best elements of PT Columbus’s most innovative Goblin decks.
How did the last Extended season set up what you will see this weekend at Grand Prix: Boston and your local PTQs? Peter Jahn knows, and he has the monster stack of decklists plus a tally of early-season results to prove it!
Zvi returns with an incredibly thorough fourteen-page analysis of Extended Affinity. Learn why he’s not holding back any of his tech, then check out his four updated versions of this Extended powerhouse!
Everyone knows that Affinity won Pro Tour: Columbus, but Mike Clair says that there have been modifications to the deck that make it even faster and more explosive in Extended. This is information you absolutely must have if you expect to succeed this PTQ season.
Recently Kyle detailed his thoughts on exactly why U/W Mind’s Desire is the right call in the current metagame. This past weekend he put his money where his mouth is and came back with a great tournament report to boot.
Chad continues our Extended event today with what many have termed “the wimpiest combo deck of all time.” Is this a fair assessment of a deck that simply blows most aggro decks out of the water, or is this something you absolutely must prepare for in order to be ready for Grand Prix: Boston this weekend? Leave it to the guy from Your Move Games to help you figure it out!
Masashi Oiso piloted a Black version of Mind’s Desire to a Top 8 finish at Pro Tour: Columbus, but is that the version that most players will want to run for the PTQ season? Mark Young isn’t so sure, and in this comprehensive look at Mind’s Desire he examines the pros and the cons of the deck and its variations for PTQ players everywhere.
Mark’s article is the second in our full-blown Extended event where the best Constructed writers and deckbuilders in the world – including Mark, Jim Ferraiolo, Brian David-Marshall, Chad Ellis, and Mike Flores among others – give you the inside scoop on the new PTQ format for two whole weeks!
U/G will see a lot of play this season for a lot of the same reasons as last year – it’s cheap to build, relatively easy to play, has good sideboard options, and tends never to be purely outclassed. This is appealing to many players who just want to take a deck to a PTQ and run it without having to put a lot of time into playtesting or metagaming. So let’s go through the basics of Madness – I wouldn’t be me though if I didn’t have a few small modifications.
Mike unveils his new version of White Weenie, then sends it off to battle nine of the top decks in the Extended format! So how did he fare? Only one way to find out…
In the fourth installment of Peter’s series searching for tech in the bones of Extended seasons past, he examines the great set rotation of 2001 and then explores the new decks and old archetypes that arose, including many that you will see this coming season.
In Part I, we looked at some of the most extreme matchups for Extended White Weenie, both the worst (board-locking NO Stick and Pernicious Deed-packing Rock), as well as what we initially thought of as some of the best – Red Decks. While the various Rock decks and U/W control were about as bad as expected, and Red Deck Wins was maybe even better than expected, Goblins didn’t turn out as expected at all. In this section, we will round up most of the rest of the expected Extended metagame and begin to determine if White Weenie is bad or just misunderstood.
This is the third in a series of articles that chronicle the last several Extended seasons. As always, the roots of the current Extended season can be found in the past: with the exception of Ravager Affinity, all of the Pro Tour: Columbus decks have appeared, in some form or other, in years ago. Some go back a lot farther than you might think, and there’s still tech in them thar decks!
