TagStandard

Then, I started thinking to myself,”Self, we need to get back on track. We need to start showing people that they can indeed be competitive with a deck that doesn’t cost two hundred seventy-five dollars and that has cards that are unwanted and unloved.” Yes, I am King Scrubracer, ruler of The Island of Misfit Cards.

My column’s mandate, updated and improved, is to generate decks that you, the average player, can build and still be competitive with. Or rather, to be grammatically correct, with which you can be competitive. I’m also going to show you how I (and my crew) make the choices that we do.

Zombies is basically within the same family of decks as mono-Black Control; they are related and share cards freely. Pure Aggro Zombies exists on one end of the spectrum, and then pure mono-Black control exists on the other. Generally you slide closer to MBC by removing Zombies and putting in more anti-aggro spells, like Barter in Blood or Infest. Between the two decks exists a happy medium, where spells like Persecute and Phyrexian Arena roam freely. The goal of this article is to discuss the cards and the play style of the midrange decks.

Mind’s Desire is not a deck, it’s a twisted demon; a parasite that infects your brain and sucks all the gooey morsels out, leaving you nothing more than a haunted shell of a man. This is the tale of a downward spiral in the tainted, aberrant madness of something far more sinister than Magic or playing solitaire. It is, indeed, a tale of Ten Thousand Goldfish! Mad, insane Goldfish. Actually, at some stage I will give you a pretty good idea where Mind’s Desire sits in regards to strength and speed in Standard… but mostly I’ll just rant and rave like a lunatic. Saddle up!

I played a twelve-land Affinity deck to a 9-1 record, winning two tournaments while dropping only one match in Swiss play to Goblins, which I later defeated in the finals. Also, the deck had enough raw power to take my eight-year-old son, Liam, into the finals of a Friday Night Magic event, even though he wasn’t playing it very well. In fact, in the finals against the more standard midrange Affinity deck of his opponent, he became disheartened when his opponent cast a Rush of Knowledge and then played out Myr Enforcers, Frogmites, and on the following turn, a Broodstar. His opponent’s Rush had allowed my son to play Future Sight in the interim, but his board position was almost non-existent besides mana and the Sight, so he conceded the game.

For fun I took his turn, cast eight spells and then Tendrils to win the game.

He’s back! One-time Dojo columnist and original rogue deckmaster Adrian Sullivan makes his triumphant return to StarCityGames.com and the Magic writing community. For those of you who’ve never read Adrian before, you can always count on him to provide honest opinions that often cut against the grain of conventional wisdom. In his inaugural column, Adrian tells you how he ended up with a rogue Red deck for Wisconsin States, discusses his play mistakes, and gives advice to those of you looking to take his deck for a spin.

You know, year after year I would march to the tune that States should mean more. A few months after the euphoria had died down from winning States in 1999, it hit home that winning really didn’t mean anything. There were few pros playing, so I wasn’t truly the best player in the State that day. I didn’t get an invite or byes to some higher-level premier event. I had a plaque and a bag and a modicum of satisfaction that I was no longer considered a complete scrub by the more competitive players out there, but that was it. I mean, you still have to play fairly decent Magic to win one of these things, so do something to make it matter.

This year, I changed my mind.

Through the course of this article, I’ll reveal to you what I consider to be the best Affinity build, show you how to play it, and reveal the theory behind it. It’s the Ancient Tomb and Mind Stone theory, which will be revealed to you inside. The important thing is that you learn to understand exactly why the Affinity deck is so robust, and once you do that, it will serve you in a proportionately greater fashion. You will be able to capitalize on the strengths of the deck – namely the fact that it essentially gets to play cards that aren’t even legal.

Aaron and I were entranced with the idea of our deck Sacrificial Bam!… But a week later after sweating over what cards to play, we were no closer to a winning deck. We had refined the original concept several times, unearthed tech, but our playtesting showed that, like many aggro decks, we lost to control. Honestly? Control owned us. And realizing that a lot of control was going to be played, a few days before States we both shifted into control.

No single deck’s”nuts draw” is more nuts, not even Goblins. You have the most flexible and adaptable mana base available, high powered creatures, card drawing, permission, direct damage, and blazing speed – all in the same deck. Whether you agree or disagree, I promise that after finishing this article, you will become a master of All Things Affinity.

Getting a 4-3-1 record isn’t exactly a badge of pride…Unless you’re playing with a deck built as a joke.* My roommate had the idea of using a Daru Spiritualist, targeting it with some of the en-Kor gang, and making lots of clerics that were very hard to kill. As it turns out, en-Kors weren’t legal, but Lightning Greaves was, and we could routinely get a trillion life by turn 4.

Every year after States, I like to review the top decks and see what new cards have made the biggest impact. In years past, this has been my”See, I told you [Set X] didn’t suck as much as you thought it did” effort to shut up the naysayers that crop up after each release – only this time, most people seemed to really like Mirrodin. So while I’m not really trying to make a big point this year, it’s still fun to see what’s working from Mirrodin. So what are the best Constructed cards to emerge from the artifact set?

What sold me on the deck eventually was my theory on Type 1: The deck that can do the most broken things wins most. I figured that the same must hold true for Type 2! So for the next day or so, I thought a bit about the deck and what I’d do with it and the sideboard (which turned out to be so-so) and how to make Affinity even more broken.

Champs have come and gone… and a NEW gauntlet has been created in it’s wake. Ladies and gentlemen… the NEW Standard decks to beat!

I put a lot of effort into testing for Champs this year and chose to play B/W Control. I found it capable of dealing with Goblins and random creature decks, and still able to compete against control decks. So why did things go horribly wrong, and what’s the real problem with B/W Control that I didn’t consider?

“Dude, that B/R Control deck looks like crap.”

“Of course it looks like crap. It is crap. When have I built a good deck?”

“Never, dude.”

“This is no exception. But it was fun, let me tell you.”

“So did it win any matches at all?”

“Surprisingly…”