TagExtended

The Ferrett covered New Orleans this weekend, and saw all of that broken Tinker action up close and personal… And in the process, he catalogued all of the common wisdom that everyone at the Pro Tour seemed to know instinctively. So let the Here Edits This Site Here guy explain why you shouldn’t count on Tinker being banned, why the format will be slower even if it’s not, why mulliganing is key in this format, and what single card is the most complex card in Extended!

I’ve been following the procession of articles on how to abuse Mind’s Desire in the current Extended format just in time for Worlds, and the question that keeps coming to mind is: How can people honestly expect to play silly tricks with Snap and Cloud of Faeries and expect the resulting deck to be good?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Why would I declare these decks as the first tier? Is it their power that leads me to this belief? No, not really. While these are all powerful archetypes, the only reason I would present them as tier one decks is simply because – as the Deck Editor who inputs every deck into StarCityGames.com’s Deck Database – these are the ones I find myself entering over and over again.

“I figured since most of the legal cards are from far before I started playing, I should stand on the shoulders of giants this time around.”
“So what giants did you stand on the shoulders of?”
“The French.”
“Bold choice, man.”

The testing results are in… And lo and behold, changes need to be made! What problems did you note with StarCity Beats – and hopefully corrected in StarCity Beats 2.0?

After decks that were predominantly Red featured so strongly in the last Grand Prix Top 8 at Reims, you would expect Red to make a strong return engagement in New Orleans – especially as the folks with three byes stepped into the fray. So where did Sligh go to?

Baby Huey looked over at EDT, energy sparking from his eyes. After all, he and EDT both sat on the same side of the Feature Match table, facing off against Kastle and Dougherty.”Come on, EDT, we gotta take these Your Movers down!”
EDT smiled wearily.”I intend to,” he replied quietly.

Eight damage smashed across the table to crush Jeff. Still on the fifth turn, Rofellos and Cradle poured a waterfall of mana into Ostrovich’s pool, summoning another Hermit, a Ravenous Baloth, a Call of the Herd, a Slate of Ancestry, and… Oh hell. It was over.

The match had been perfect for StarCityGames coverage; Laura Mills, former writer for StarCity, was up against Elliot Fertik – a sporadic writer for StarCity. Two internet writers, from rival sites, going head to head in Round 2? How could you miss it? Includes a tremendous error, done twice in a row!

Welcome back to another installment of 18,000 words, in which I once again pay off the debt I owe society, word by word. This week, we’re looking at Christophe Lippert’s Fiends and Joachim Hoh’s White Weenie.
Word-O-Meter: 2500/11900 Words (21% Complete)

For those of you who need a little Nate Heiss rogue spice in their life, I give you with a little Extended deck I have been working on that uses many of my favorite cards. It is a decent deck that I may run in a later PTQ, but I am always glad to share… ‘Tis the season, after all!