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by Gandalf
Rock, Paper, Scissors Well, as everyone knows, the Pro Tour will begin its 1998 season with Pro Tour: Los Angeles in March, and the qualifier tournaments have been running since early December for all of us who’d like to take it to the ‘Tour, myself included. I sat out of the whole Mainz idea, correctly reasoning that a) 5e/Visions sealed and draft are very, very uninteresting, and b) I can’t get to Mainz even if I do qualify, myself now being a poor starving college student. Now that it’s Stateside again, I decided to give it a run, only to find out that the damned thing is going to be in the Extended format, which I had completely ignored since its inception. To see the Banned list for Extended, check out the WotC homepage for the most recent update. Extended is sort of an old-school T2 with Duals and a few new [Tempest] tricks up its sleeve. The format is all expansions from The Dark on, and all editions of the basic set from Third Edition (Revised) on. This is a very large environment, but one must remember that M:tG players, at heart, are unimaginative and uncreative, letting others do most of the work for them. So, the dominant deck-types are: a W/r Weenie deck, a Black or B/r Necrodeck, a U/W or U/W/g Prison deck, and a R/U/W control deck nicknamed Tongo Nation for the team that created it for Pro Tour: Chicago. Other popular variants are monored Sligh, black weenie-Buried Alive, CounterPost, and a pair of insipid combo decks, Prosperous Bloom and Atomic Bomberman, AKA the infamous "Fruity Pebbles" deck. Go figure. But of course, these decks tend to abuse the best cards in the environment, so be prepared to see more Duals, Wastelands, Swords to Plowshares, Hymn to Tourachs, Land Taxes, Lightning Bolts, Mishra’s Factories, and... Tithes?!?!? Believe it or not, Tithe is one of the most potent and common cards in the Extended environment, for their ability to net you not only Plains but Scrublands, Tundra, Savannah, and Plateau, making it a good problem-solver for the multicolored decks that are so popular. The "Ancestral Land Tax" is one hell of a problem-solver, and will probably be used over Land Tax in most decks. Tempest has been added to the Extended environment, and has had some shakeup in the most dominant deck types: Prison can now use Propaganda as creature control, Wastelands complement many deck types, and are generally strong against the environment; Buried Alive can use Intuition to give a tired deck an interesting twist. The biggest changes, however, have been caused by Goblin Bombardment, Cursed Scroll, Soltari Priest, and Scroll Rack. "Fruity Pebbles" is an Enduring Renewal infinity engine, and the combo of Goblin Bombardment/Enduring Renewal/0cc Artifact Creature allows for speedy kills when backed by control; this is the Atomic Bomberman deck. Cursed Scroll is (italics) everywhere (/italics), finding its niche quite nicely in this often fast and aggressive environment. Soltari Priests are packed 4 per White Weenie deck, being both unblockable and un-Bolt-able. Perhaps the worst (read: most powerful) shift from Tempest is in the ease and popularity of the Land Tax/Scroll Rack combo, giving the power of an Ancestral Recall each turn.
It’s a four-variable Rock/Paper/Scissors game, between Necro, Tax/Rack Weenie, Prison, and Tongo. No one has a specific advantage over the other, each being essentially well-balanced against the rest of the field. Here’s how to classify each, if you’re playing against them; some sideboard considerations, and their weaknesses.
There are, of course, so many different and individual variants of each of these deck types that it is best to rely not on the decklist you might have seen before the tournament but on what each deck is supposed to do. Prison locks your game down with board-control, eventually gaining control over your mana supply. Tongo controls your threats while attacking you with threats of their own that are hard to deal with, especially Frenetic Efreet, one of the signature cards of the deck. Tax/Rack cranks the damage while harrying your resources and permanents with a seemingly endless supply of both disruption and creatures. Necro either overwhelms in a similar manner, or uses Disks to eliminate your resources while your cards-in-hand resource is lowest, eventually going into Lake/Drain "lock". For the Extended environment, I devised (from 0-60, of course!) a White/Red weenie-Burn deck. In "Playtesting", which I hardly have any time to do or people to do it with anymore, I took an early version to a Neutral Ground tournament only to lose to double-Manascrew in the quarterfinals to a similar deck running the Tax/Rack combo. The version I am running is now 4 colors (with sideboard included) and will be used by me and my "Minions" as the team deck of our half-joking "Team Bad Mojo"; the name comes from our unusual luck patterns at tournaments, with me and Minion #1, AKA Kevin, losing inopportune matches to mega-manascrew, and Minion #2, AKA Shep, with his innate ability to win 4 straight, then lose 3 straight, to bomb out of tourneys. I’m perfectly content to release this deck before running it in the PTQ’s myself with the knowledge that no one recognizes me on sight, and the deck (unfortunately) looks like a dozen other variants of Rack/Tax, even though I withheld from adding Taxes thanks to minimal Basic Land content. The deck is:
I won’t go so far as to divulge my sideboard, but you can probably get a few hints here and there... I will note, however, that the Scrublands is there because I have a few Perishes in the sideboard, not because I like to flagrantly tempt newbies with swampwalking creatures. The rest is a trade secret, I’d tell you but then I couldn’t beat you. And remember the immortal words of Homer Simpson: "Mmmmm, Rock. Nothing beats Rock." --Sean McKeown --[email protected]
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