Several teams tried breaking the card, but none could build a consistent enough deck to go along with the artifact. Other players asked, on the day of Pro Tour Houston,”isn’t that card banned?” (It isn’t.) So why, at a time when Astroglide decks were burning up States, did not one cycling-centered deck appear at Houston?
Word-O-Meter: 1300/11900 words (11% complete)
I looked through my binder of deck stock. I saw the four Tangle Wires. A Frozen Fish or Blue Skies variant, maybe? I kept flipping, and there were a full set of Veteran Brawlers from a recent purchase. Brawlers and Tangle Wires? Hmmm. Now that I had my deck idea, it was time to work on it – and it wasn’t Rob Dougherty’s deck.
So I started playing around with trying to move popular OBC decks to Extended. Wonder Dog (U/G Madness) and Mono-Black Control easily made the jump from Odyssey Block Constructed to Standard. Could the archetypes go further and dominate Extended? (That’s a loaded question. I wouldn’t be writing this article if the answer was”no.”) Enheartened by results at Reims, I decided to playtest and see what I got.
The words that hit my brain tell me that whoever’s on the other end of the phone needs me to tell them something, so that things can be made”ready” for whatever it is I’m doing today. I’d really like to give them some creative profanity instead, but it’s early and I’ve practically forgotten how to talk. I hear my gravel-and-salt voice scrape together five words:”Bring me The Red Cards.”
Right now, YMG is focussed on Standard for the Masters and Draft for the Pro Tour – but I had an idea for an Extended deck, and considering my team is working on other formats, I thought I’d try out something new. I’d like to work with StarCityGames.com readers in the same way that I work with my team: I give you guys my concept and decklist, you all test it and show me where it’s weak. Are you up to the challenge?
Part Extended strategy, part multiplayer, all fun – where’s an editor to put this? Well, since he goes into some detail on his current Extended Miracle Gro build and the matchups, it might as well go here – but hey, you wanna also hear about a multiplayer deck that wins by endlessly recursing Shahrazad? Now THAT’S funny.
Last weekend, the Extended season started with a very loud bang in the form of an 833 player Grand Prix in Europe. Clearly, this was a tough tournament to play in – but a lot can be learned from this bloodbath, which left 819 casualties on day one. The Day One survivors provide a snapshot of what decks are good in the post Houston metagame, because no bad decks are going 7-1-1, that’s for sure. What deck does Rob think that YOU should add to your playtest gauntlet right now?
The main deck served me well enough: Benzo gets lots of easy game one wins versus players who have their answers in the sideboard. The real key to my success was in our sideboarding plans. As my opponents were boarding in cards that allowed them to beat Reanimator decks in their testing, I was bringing in cards that changed the way my deck worked. The cards they sideboarded in were simply inappropriate to deal with the deck they were facing in game 2… So let me show you how, and why, you sideboard against The Rock, TurboOath, U/B Reanimator, Aluren, Tog, Infestation/Upheaval, Enchantress, and Angry Ghoul.
There’s been a lot of debate about what sorts of decks The Rock and Reanimator are – and although people are wrong in their placement, there is a radical shift of the metagame clock that is happening as we watch. However, there are still lessons to be learned – and what can the metagame clock tell us about the viability of Aggro-Control and the future of Reanimator?
Want the scoop on Extended? StarCity’s got the inside track! First of all, read Rob Dougherty’s article on how he developed the Reanimator deck that got him second place at Pro Tour Houston – why he abandoned the Zombie Infestation plan, what cards he tried in it that didn’t work, why he wanted the transformational sideboard, and how Dave Humpherys’ gave him the two cards that pushed it over the top.
What are the core cards of the new decks? Which decks didn’t place in the Top 8, but did surprisingly well anyway? Where does the new Extended fall on the metagame clock? Lots of questions, lots of answers.
Let me focus on what Onslaught brought to the Extended party. Was it champagne and caviar, or Night Train and pork rinds? Which cards got the most play, and in what decks?
I’m sick of hearing people say that R&D has castrated white in Extended – get over Swords to Plowshares, people! In the meantime, I’m willing to ante up 181 cards that will see play at PT: Houston – and if I’m wrong, I may wind up writing sixty-four pages of crow.
It was a strange Invitational tournament, where I got terribly luck-screwed at 5-Color and familarity-screwed by Draft… But I did get to see the future of Extended as seen by some of the top pros, my friends, and let me tell you that the future is base-blue.
Everyone’s trying to fix TurboLand, and I find Zvi’s deck a little too dependent on one victory condition – so of course I tweak it. But then again, I can come up with a Miracle-Gro decklist that Just. Might. Work.
