TagExtended

After bombing out at U.S. Nats while playing a horrible Goblin deck, I promised never again to sully my hands with Goblin Warchiefs or Piledrivers, content to play with artifact lands in the only deck that can use them well. Fast forward to a week ago and Ruel’s Goblin deck caught my eye and I was able to pilot it to a mighty *ahem* 2-2 finish at a local Neutral Ground tournament. Now, with weeks of playtesting under my belt against a gauntlet that includes five of the most relevant matchups in Extended today, I’m happy to say that I’m finally able to give you reliable information on how it performs against the field.

Flores: Tell me a deck I can write about that your readers will love.
Knut: Well Mike, you know how much you love U/G Threshold? The readers at StarCityGames.com are like that about White Weenie, except even more so. They have a passion for that deck that burns brighter than ten thousand suns.
Flores: Okay, but this will be Extended, not some Romeo-style Standard deck.
Knut: Even better!

Sexy Rector. Ghoul Burst. Pattern. And most recently Rebirth. The deck has had many names, but none of them seem to stick. Sexy Rector sounds like a bad porno movie title. Phyrexian Ghoul now has to compete with Nantuko Husk. Thanks to Symbiotic Wurm, Saproling Burst isn’t even necessary anymore. The deck finished just outside the Top 32 in Columbus and has been completely under the radar in the prelude to Extended season, so it has a lot of surprise factor. Should you be playing it? Rick Rust thinks so…

I knew that I wanted to play something that wasn’t Red Deck Wins, but was open to the possibility of playing Goblins, for the sole purpose of not wanting to interact with my opponent. I had to do way too much of that during the Block Constructed season playing the Freshmaker deck, and I have to deal with a lot of it in current Standard when I am playing mono-Blue control, so I just wanted to combo someone or attack with thousands of goblins simultaneously, completely oblivious to the opponent’s resources. Unfortunately, nothing struck my fancy other than Oiso’s Blue/Black Mind’s Desire deck, which I shuffled up and played several games against various builds of RDW. The results were not good…

This is the second in a series of articles recapping past Extended seasons. Since all Extended seasons follow similar paths, this history is prequel to the new season that is about to begin, and many of the decks discusses here are the grandfathers of decks you will be playing in the weeks to come. Some may even have old-school deck that you can delve into to solve problem matches. This article is also interesting, in and of itself. Enjoy.

Before you get too far into this article, please keep in mind that this is the sordid history of U/G Threshold, rather than a proper one in the vein of Deck Histories and Concepts or some such. Rather than mentioning such actually successful masters of the Mongoose as David Humpherys or Raphael Levy, this article is going to focus on a series of decks designed by yours truly and Brian David-Marshall since Odyssey Block. BDM and I love this deck to what can only be considered an unhealthy degree and if you play it you might too.

In this ironically titled article, Clair looks at the perils even good players often have when picking up a deck for the first time and expecting to win with it at a tournament. None of us can expect to replicate the success of Olivier Ruel when we first pick up the Frenchman’s deck, even if you’ve got the illustrious michaelj around to help you try and “make the deck better.”

Students of the Paskins School are generally known for turning their noses up at players that add other colors to Red decks, citing them as “tainted” and wondering why anyone would feel the need to defile such a glorious color with unfortunate impurities. This week, however, Dan takes a look at recent Goblin decks in Extended and comes to the conclusion that there are some very good reasons to add Black cards to everyone’s favorite Red men.

As I promised last week, today we will go over the two most popular “combo” decks in the format – Desire and Aluren – and see what their place is in this metagame. Now I know some people consider Life a combo deck, but I don’t. I mean, gaining infinite life is kind of lame, wouldn’t you say? Now casting a ton of free spells, that’s more like it!

In what may be the most influential article of the Extended season thus far, Chad teaches you the crucial skills necessary to own your Extended PTQs and provides a heaping helping of sideboard and maindeck tech for anyone hoping to make earn a slot in Philadelphia. This is a must-read article for any serious Magic player.

Good man and Grand Prix: Columbus Top 8 member Cedric Phillips makes his first appearance on StarCityGames.com with analysis of Pro Tour: Columbus, the skinny on the best builds of U/G Madness, and a couple of pictures of the smokin’ hot Philadelphia Eagles cheerleaders. What’s not to love?

So, I started looking at a few of the most popular Extended decks like U/G Madness and Psychatog, and I noticed that Islandwalk might be good against them. Islandwalk usually means playing Blue, Lord of Atlantis, and Merfolk. Okay, it always means playing Blue, Lord of Atlantis, and Merfolk. Could such a deck work?

The deck in question is Red Deck Wins. The question in question is “Jet or Hammer?” Last week we talked about these cards in the RDW mirror match, and I came out saying that I like Magma Jet more. Since then, two outstanding Red mages have stepped forward supporting Volcanic Hammer. Now, I agree with them that Hammer is better in the mirror, but what about the other matchups?

Every year, there is one deck which does much better in the Pro Tour Qualifiers than it does in the Pro Tour. Two years ago, only two people played it at the Pro Tour and in the following qualification season it won a Grand Prix and qualified dozens of players for the following Pro Tour. Last year, its highest finish at the PT was 9th, and yet again, despite all the powerful decks, it was one of the dominant decks in the qualifiers. And this year it was one of the best decks at the Pro Tour. All of which means that even if you have no intention of playing the Red Deck, this is still a deck which you need to know all about.

After doing some testing at Grand Prix: Chicago, Osyp reports back that Affinity is not the deck to play at the first few Extended PTQs if you want to be successful, but he has a good idea about two decks that might be winners in the new metagame.