TagStandard

As promised, here’s Jeff’s response to Antonino De Rosa’s article.

Turn 5 – At this point, I was generating infinite mana. It was turn 5 because everyone had been targeting me, and I had had my turn 2 Metalworker and turn 3 Thran Dynamo killed. Not good enough. As I put 500 Blue mana in my pool, a bystander asked”But how do you kill them?” I dropped Memnarch, turned to the bystander and said”This game, I’ll kill them with an FTK, a couple elves, that Steelshaper and whatever Steve has under that Bonesplitter. But since I’m stealing everything on the board, including lands, they’ll probably concede.”

The real question was, could I take what I learned about Voltaic Construct and build a competitive Type Two deck capable of generating infinite mana? Well, I could certainly try…

I know what you’re thinking.”A sixty-two card Cleric deck!? The kids are too much for him; Rob’s finally gone off the deep end.” Okay, I admit it may look that way, but this deck is actually good. No, really. Five PT top 8’s, four of which were Constructed, remember. You’re going to have to trust me on this one.

In this installment, the Jimmest of Beans provides an updated build of everyone’s favorite Standard combo deck, gives sideboarding information for the current metagame, and answers the question on everbody’s mind:

Jim, how do you play this damned thing?

So I got to thinking, maybe Chittering Rats would be really good in an Oversold Cemetery deck. I saw a copy of one that made top eight in an E-league tournament (Yeah, I know the site is down, but often times after a Master tournament, there will be a link on IRC to the top eight decks in the event. You can download them, and see what the people played.) So, like any good scammer for other people’s work, I took it, played it some, and started to make some changes.

Well folks, Regionals is right around the corner. The Regionals metagame will look similar to the metagame for States with a few changes from Darksteel. The decks that Darksteel will yield will undoubtedly pop up soon after Pro Tour: Kobe shows us what the pros will do with the new cards, but until that time I will go over a few of the staple decks in the environment that wont be much affected by Darksteel. Each week I will bring you a standard deck that will be a factor in the metagame. The first of these decks is W/R Slide – a deck that has been strong since Onslaught was printed, and was cemented as a top deck at Pro Tour: Venice.

I’m standing around, waiting for my flight to start, when rising voices at one of the other flights attract my attention. From what I could glean of the argument, somebody was not running a card in his deck, and all of his friends were mocking him for it. I moved forward to catch the details, and I saw the card in question: Darksteel Gargoyle. The guy was of the opinion that he could be dead by the time he could get the seven mana to play it.

That story is basically my way of saying this: yeah, I know that the indestructible cards are good in Limited. Really good. Crazy good. But that’s not what this article is about. It’s about Constructed formats, and what we can do with these titanic trinkets on February 20 and thereafter.

Elves needed a better way to get reusable growth effects.
Enter Isochron Scepter. We all know the tricks that this cheap, uncommon artifact can do. We all dream of the draw where we get a Chrome Mox and an Island on the first turn so that we can drop the Scepter, imprinting Boomerang. Of course, some of us just dream of having four Chrome Mox. But that’s a different story.

The Scepter hasn’t been looked at through the minty fresh glasses of the Green mage, though…

With Regionals on the way, it’s time for all of us — except the few happy qualified for Kobe – to focus on Standard again. This format before Darksteel was a bit boring because of the domination of Affinity and the White control decks. Now, with the introduction of Darksteel, it’s certainly a better time for innovation. I’m going to take a look at updated versions of the three tier 1 decks that you should be testing all of your latest creations against.

If you’ve ever wondered what one of the Top Ten players in the world thinks about when he dabbles with new decks in his favorite format, check inside!

Welcome, welcome to the corner of all that is janky and fun, where high casting cost doesn’t matter, just as long as the card is boooombtastic! See the deck that is loads of fun to play, and is just scary if it gets rolling! Hear the screams of the damned as they suffer a miserable death to your amazing deck of Junk! Feel the flames of Oblivion licking at your feet, just waiting to snuff out your essence!

A Darksteel legal deck containing an infinite damage combo is just a click away!

Greater Harvester

I was a huge fan of Braids, Cabal Minion and played Pirates and other Braids decks to some success while Psycho-B*tch was around. Greater Harvester might be even better. There’s a ton of things going for this card; as a 5/6 it’s got a huge threatening body that can put away a game quickly if it’s ability disrupts your opponent for a turn or two. And that disruption ability! Having your opponent sacrifice two permanents each time you hit them is amazing. The only hiccup is the fact that your opponent will likely want to chump block, trading his worst creature for your least-needed permanent.

Wait just a minute though – that’s not really a hiccup at all since Black is chock full of removal!

Since I’ve been back, I’ve had ton of e-mails from cheap scrubs (like me!) asking how I would build a certain deck if I didn’t use any rares or only used a couple of rares. Well, I can answer that quite easily. These people know that I’m bad. Yet, they still want my advice. What can I do except give it to them? Last week’s deck, the cheap Goblin thing, was the first one that I tackled in that fashion. It seems that a lot of players feel the way I do.”Love Goblins. Hate that some of them cost twelve bucks now.” Interestingly, one of the more frequent requests involves Affinity. I find that interesting, because the typical Affinity deck runs many fewer rares than a lot of other high-profile decks…

Maybe you played in the prerelease. Maybe you’ve been following the spoiler on www.mtgnews.com; maybe you’ve read the official spoiler on Wizards’ Darksteel page. At any rate, you’ve got a brand new set of cards to digest, process, and evaluate for Constructed play. While I appreciate the folks who do a complete, card-by-card evaluation of the set, I’d instead like to share my thoughts on what I think is the cream of the crop, the sharp edge of Darksteel. That’s what we’re all really interested in anyway, right?

After months of tuning, I’ve created a Mind’s Desire deck that works consistently, doesn’t fold to artifact hate, holds its own against creatures, and authors some awe-inspiring synergy that’s left more than a few onlookers mesmerized. It’s also the most fun deck I’ve ever played and uses a bunch of cards that have been deemed useless, too slow, or unplayable for the format. Oh and lest I forget – it’s competitive with most of the top decks in Standard.

Shall I continue?

The Darksteel spoiler has what appears to be a “new” Tinker, Reshape, once again keeping with Wizards’ tradition of taking a broken card and “fixing” it into a virtually unplayable replacement. But if you want a Tinker replacement, what about the underrated and overlooked Trash for Treasure?