Like almost every Magic player in the World I'm looking forward for the PTQ Extended Season. Mine will start on 14/02 but there are already lots of PTQ events avaiable for scouting. Since I started playing Magic The Gathering more actively one of my idols was Frank Karsten, for his playing skills but above all for his dedication to the game and his insightful view about every format. Recently he wrote a couple of new articles at a German Magic site and again blew every one out of their minds by the way he approached the Worlds Championship and the amount of data he collected for a single event.Im no Frank Karsten but still I did my share of research and I would like to share my results with you.
In this graphic you can get a first glance at my data collection featuring the 33 Events I studied. There is a GIANT conclusion to get at a first glance: Everyone loves Fae! Its was by far the most played deck all around the world with almost 30% of the field being composed by the nifty blue creatures. Generally being the most played the gives an edge in the most events win percentage and this time around was exactely what happened:
With fae being the most played it was also the one with more wins with almos 40% of the total wins. Check this graph to check both attendance and number of wins of the decks:
This graphic helps us to draw an interesting conclusion, neither Burn or Elves that have been regularly played everywhere could manage a win. Also All in Red and Swat Storm were fairly played but unsucessful as well. With this data in our minds, lets take a trip to the winning decks:
UW Tron by Nicholas Gulledge ( more lists: 1 , 2 , 3 )
The game plan of Tron is quite simple: frustrate your opponents game with Chalice of the Void, Engineered Explosives, Wrath of God and numerous counters until you can go "infinite" with your Mindslaver or beat them out with Decree of Justice tokens or recursable Triskelion and Sundering Titan. Main deck Chalice helps you fight faster decks like Burn, Elves,TEPS,All in Red, Zoo or even Faeries, it can also shut down discard like Raven's Crime or Thoughtseize from Rock/Death Clouds.Explosives can blow everything out of the table and again can help you fight all the decks already mentioned.
Fae is not an easy matchup for this deck, their spells are cheaper and those Mutavault are trouble for tron.They also have counters to frustrate all your efforts. On of the best chances of the deck is to go with a protected Triskelion or with a surprise Decree being aware of their own Explosives or even Stifle. Affinity is also a hard mu since they'll be really quick and you need some time to set up your game. The good news is they wont have any disruption main deck which means that if you can hold them with Explosives and Wrath you can go for the Slaver combo. After sideboard you can add Sower and Finks to help you out. Elves and Burn could be trouble if you go with a slow hand but Explosives and Chalices should shut them off.After board is becomes quite diferent having Sower and an extra copy of Chalice for Elves and 3 Finks + 4 CoP Red vs Burn or Zoo, since most of the new Zoo versions are the RGw ones that I'll show later which pack more red spells. Those CoP Reds are also a way to fight both All in Red and Swans shutting down their win conditions.
Curiosly both Parfait and UW Tron have a 50% of wins in this collected events since there were 2 of each present and one of each won an event. Parfait is a old favorite of many, featuring the old trend of life gain given by Martyr of Sands + Proclamation of Rebirth and a lot of "disruption cards".
Crovax, Ascendant Hero can easily deal with Elves if it hits the table quickly and can also shut down any Empty the Warrens shenaningans. If you're able to cast it versus Fae it could also win that mathcup.Again Chalice works disrupting any cheap spells your opponents may have. Akroma's Vengeance easily deals with affinity obliterating their side of the table. Runed Halo set at Grapeshot,Tendrils of Agony or Conflagrate can easily win Game 1 vs Swat Storm or Elves, TEPS or Swans respectively since they usually dont pack any bounce main deck.
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Decree of Justice is they key weapon versus Fae since if they dont have an Explosives set to 0, the amount of mana generated by Temple of the False God could power a back breaking swarm of Soldiers. It can gain an edge vs any aggro matchup using life gaining and the board sweepers. Control matchups featuring both Death Cloud and Fae should be quite dificult for you having Boil and Extirpate in the sideboard to help you.
Zoo suffered a twist a while ago parting from the "classic" version featuring all 5 colors with Dark Confidant to power up the deck and Tribal Flames as the big finisher to the ultimate Aggro/Burn version. The newest aggro version works better vs Fae being faster and with better cards in the matchup such as Mogg Fanatic, Molten Rain and Sulfuric Vortex, while some versions also pack in Vulshok Sorcerer.
The goal is simple. attack and burn your opponents to the ground. Sulfuric Vortex denies them of any life gain and your burn can be aimed while they deal with the creatures. Jitte helps the in the mirror and also beating Elves and Faeries down. The sideboard features Pyrostatic Pillar vs Elves and Storm,Choke vs Swans and Fae, and Shattering Spree vs Affinity and Chalice of The Void. Affinity could be a hard matchup if they drop Arcbound Ravager since your (Lighting Helix) would do no good. but after board the Sprees should do it. Be aware of Explosives and Crime/Punishment when you drop all your 1 drops.
The four Darkblast main deck should help you get the edge against Elves and help battle Fae allied with the recursive power of disruption of Raven's Crime and a timely Thoughtseize. Bitterblossom also gives you a steady army to fight the little blue creatures and allied with Kitchen Finks and Umezawa's Jitte is enough to overwhelm them. Jitte and Finks can also help against Zoo while you take their resources with Raven's Crime and make them play in topdeck mode. Putrefy and Slaughter Pact kill their creatures while Worm Harvest is enought to end the game.
Pro Tour Berlin innovative deck, The Tezzerator was built to destroy Elves and crush Zoo. Packing lots of hate cards such as Chalice of The Void, Engineered Explosives, Firespout or Ensnaring Bridge it can easily deal with any ground menace and still fight the air packed with Faeries. Control the game until you can drop a Tezzeret the Seeker and start fetching key pieces vs any matchup or attack in the air with (Vendillion Clique). Trinket Mage and his assorted package gives you more options to turn the game to your side, and, since you can recur it or Vendillion with one of the 4 Riptide Laboratory thein gain lots of value. Condescend + Cryptic Command + (Vendillion Clique) + Chalice / Explosives help you in the Combo matchups such as Swans , TEPS or Swat Storm and also versus Tron. The sideboard package is almost a Silver Bullet with numerous solutions for almost every matchup.
Death Cloud by Antonio Calabrese ( more lists: 1 , 2 , 3 )
Like Rock , Death Cloud relies on the recursive power of Life from The Loam + Crime / Harvest / Cycling Lands to fight both long battles and gain the edge against other decks. The main diferences relating to Rock are the ausence of Bitterblossom and the addiction of the game breaking Death Cloud allied with planeswalkers generally Garruk Wildspeaker. This gives you an oppurtunity to clean the table and still be able to pop a 3/3 after obliterating everything else. Sakura-Tribe Elder accelerates the deck while board sweepers such as Death Cloud and Damnation keep the creatures off the board making this way life miserable for Zoo, Elves and other aggro decks. Thoughtseize and Raven's Crime again are the tool versus Storms, Swans, Fae and controls as such. Its one of my favorites decks which I believe to have a good matchup versus all of the field if played correctly. RGw Burn/Zoo its kind of an hard matchup as already described by LSV since turn 1 Nacatl can give inflict you a lot of damage until you can drop Finks or Ravenous Baloth on the table. After board, Darkblast,Damnation and Night of Souls' Betrayal complely rend impossible Elve's game plan while Extirpate, Thoughtseize and Seal of Primordium deal with Storm etc. Affinity is also a good matchup since they dont pack any disruption main deck and they can´t really fight Damnation or Worm Harvest. Just chumpblock them, keep Ornithopter and Cranial Plating of the table and the rest should be easy.
An old favorite of last season , Power House Mr. Dredge was pronounced dead on October 2008 when Extended rotation happened, losing the insane power of this following cards:
Then , something happened at Pro Tour Berlin 2008 , and there was a buzz about how dredge could once again rise to the top thanks to this newest founds additions:
The uses cards like Magus and Glimpse to fill your graveyard quickly then dredging lots of new cards trough Golgari Grave-Troll or Stinkweed Imp. A Narcomoeba or more will pop up until you can use a flashbacked or hardcasted Dread Return to power up a Flame-Kin Zealot that will haste all your 2/2 Zombie tokens from Bridge from Below winning the game in a nice fashion.Some use also Mesmeric Orb to power up the graveyard madness.
The deck is not interactive so it wont actually matter what other decks do. You just have to win faster than they can disrupt or outrace you. Mogg Fanatic , Sakura-Tribe Elder and alikes are trouble since they can remove your Bridges. Some decks pack Darkblast main deck to help vs this creatures and also versus Elves or Faeries. Counters are not as effective versus dredge so the only concerd is wether you can go off or not. Some sideboards have some Tomord's Crypt in to fight this matchup but generally it will be left alone to do his business so your only choice is how much you want to gamble with it.
This deck actually doesn't need any presentations. Turn 1 Arcbound Worker is a dreaded sight everywhere Extended is played. The power of Affinity for Artifacts has converted lots of players around the world to the Modular madness.
The deck suffered a change when Shards of Alara come into place giving a bunch of cards that gave more power to Affinity as well as more versatility:
Master of Etherium works as a Glorious Anthem as well as a deadly threat against every deck pumping every creature or being a 7/7 or 8/8 on 3rd turn. Soul's Fire is an alternative to Fatal Frenzy since it can combine with Atog, Arcbound Ravager or Master of Etherium for an instant kill.Ethersworn Canonist is a key card to fight matchups such as Elves or Storm, forcing them to deal with it or perish. While they deal with it they give you time to kill them. One of the biggest problems of Affinity is the quantity of hate cards that can be squeezed in any deck's sideboard:
With a good matchup versus Fae unless they come out fast with a timely Explosives or (Veldaken Shackles) and Sower of Temptation and a decent matchup vs Zoo, this deck has its nemesis in the form os Elves and Death Cloud. Cloud will have lots of hate cards in addiction to the main deck mass/spot removal while Elves will be packing the Wirewood Symbiote + Viridian Shaman shenanigans. Sideboarded Thoughtseize or Ethersworn Canonist + Darkblast/Krark-Clan Shaman should help you fight them.
Luis-Scott Vargas won Grand Prix Los Angeles recently with his take on the old popular TEPS. In a field where almost every storm decks where Swat Storm, LSV replaced Grapeshot and (Pyromancer's Swat) for Tendrils of Agony and Electrolyze giving and edge to delay elves and kill Canonists or Tidehollow Scullers. The deck relies on a bunch of spell being played on the same turn involving rituals and then using Mind's Desire to power up a game ending Tendrils of Agony.
Again not a very interactive deck besides Remand and Electrolyze, relying on the 4th turn kill provided by Lotus Bloom. Remand serves both as a time walk and an addionatl draw or Desire remanding the original spell and letting the copies resolve. Elves is hard if they can go off before you can Electrolyze them or Remand a key (Chords of Calling) or Weird Harvest. Faeries can be a pain if you're not used to play with Storm. (Vendillion Clique can take off the Storm spell from your hand in response to a bunch of rituals or Manamorphose. After board Pact of Negation + Gigadrowse should turn the matchup a side depending on how much hate they might have versus you like Stifle or Trickbind.
Versus mirror,Swans,Elves or even Life from The Loam shenanigans, Brain Freeze is the ideal card winning the game out of a lost situation.
About this deck I won't duel much because putting aside the fact it has already been covered in almost every possible place I advise you to read Frank Karsten's Article about it, where he makes a general analysis of every matchup and every card he uses in the deck.
Burn is always a backup plan for almost every magic player. It doesn't require lots of testing and the strategy is simple, burn your oponent to death.g Packing a full suit of burn spells, it can kill at turn 3 or 4, especially in extended where there are lots of Fetch lands , Thoughtseize and shocklands.The game plan requires you to kill your opponent before he can get his game going or any outside strategy against you such as lifegain/counters.If you can stick a Sulfuric Vortex vs any control deck they'll have lots of problems winning that game since it turns off any quality cards they might have against you.
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Pyrostatic Pillar in the sideboard is an all field weapon. Turning off Storm and Elves, some players side it in versus Affinity as well.Blood Moon should help you race against zoo slowing them down a lot while the full 5 Artifact kill spels should turn off Jitte's and Affinity as well.
Probably the current best deck of extended. Some might not agree but the results speak for themselves. Its the most versatil deck of the enviroment being able to adapt to almost every situation. Spell Snare and Mana Leak work almost as hard counters in the meta while SpellStutter Sprite is a dreaded sight at every PTQ table.
Controlling the game with counters and Explosives is later replaced by killing the oponent with Jitte suited creatures. Affinity may give you a hard time with faster and bigger creatures. Vedalken Shackles and Sower of Temptation should be enough to calm the down anyway. Elves may be a walk in the park especially if they're not familiar with the deck. Spellstutter becomes a hard counter and Explosives can destroy all their board. Storm depends on how soon they can go off and especially the hand they might have. Depending if you pack Stifle main deck or even Glen Elendra Archmage.
Faeries vs Storm#2
One of Fae biggest concernes regarding green or red decks may come in the form of this 2 new cards from Conflux:
Volcanic Fallout could be a major staple against both Faeries and Elves while the Scattershot Archer will probably be Elves way of dealing with the pesky little blue creatures. Another card I would like to talk about is an obvious one of course for those of you that have been following the latest news:
This card of course reminds you of an old one doesnt it? Being able to remove any creature for the game is actually great , but paying W for it? Marvellous! And only giving a Basic land to the opponent? Does this card bring donnuts as well? It will probably be a staple in the near extended season being able to shut down decks such as Swans by removing the game winning card Swans of Bryn Argoll or removing any threats on the table for a "ridiculous" draw back.
I hope this article has enlightened you about the metagame to expect at any PTQ near you.
Excellent article, very good for whoever's playing ptq able to know what to expect all very well analyzed in this article.
We want more of these articles.
nice
by riclas (not verified)
at Sun, 02/08/2009 - 19:45
5
all the info one might need for the ptqs :=)
the decklists are much better presented than your last article, although the frank karsten elves is still bad :(
two things i would have liked to see:
first graphic on percentages, not on number of wins
second graph with a third bar on "percentage of wins", because fae got alot of top8s but very few wins. it would be interesting to see what were the best performing decks overall.
there is also a missing reference that the "attendance" is on top8s, it can give the idea it's the attendance of a whole tournament :)
I liked it. It's easy to see that you applied yourself by the ammount of information it countains. The videos are nice too. Yes a few small things need improvment but overall it's pretty good.
Ill agree on both issues but As I said I'll be working on the layout for my next articles and about the MTGO Focus issue I'll also improve that in the next one.
Gotta love your work. You just try to cover all the aspects on the issues you are analyzing, and what's cool is that you can do it with all the videos and images, I like it, great article, keep them coming.
This will remove 5 of the 10 Planeswalkers from the game at instant speed for 1W, a real bargain. It also gets rid or most of the big nasties in Conflux...
I actually like it too but Having discussed it with some portuguese pros it came to my attention that in ext it wont do much besides being a nice weapon vs AiR and Sulfuric Vortex. Bur still path to exile will be better.
At this moment only Bitterloaam uses it consistenly besides a few fae builds. Its a very good target in standard I just dont see it as a threat in extended to justify the inclusion of an anti card even if it can be good vs other stuff.
I don't think Celestial Purge will shine in Extented, at least yet. Not many decks play white and it surely isn't a reason for a splash. AIR is a bad deck and there are so many other solution for it. Other cards that it deals with there are other, probably more versatile solutions.
I've seen a couple of decks already with Conflux and something that realy struck me out was a new Loam / Terravore like. I'll leave here the list as part of the article since I didnt talk about the Knight of the Reliquiary and Maybe I should've.
![[Att+Wins.jpg]](/sites/default/files/u411/Att%2BWins.jpg)
29 Comments
Nice article, but the videos aren't working.
Thank you, The Editor is working fiercily to solve the issues with the article
Looks like I got everything back up and running. Good job on the article, a lot of good work here, and plenty of information that is important.
Excellent article, very good for whoever's playing ptq able to know what to expect all very well analyzed in this article.
We want more of these articles.
Nice take on the field, nice compilation of decks, I'd like to see that tron working, as it's one of my favourites.
As for the article himself, nicely written, and good reviews for the major Tier decks around on ext. scene
Nice one, dude. Pretty good explanations.
very good andrea
great articlE
Good stuff.
Keep up with the good work. Maybe next time you could expand the analysis to the metagame we can expect online.
Nice post! Continue with the good work
great insight. Very detailed
all the info one might need for the ptqs :=)
the decklists are much better presented than your last article, although the frank karsten elves is still bad :(
two things i would have liked to see:
first graphic on percentages, not on number of wins
second graph with a third bar on "percentage of wins", because fae got alot of top8s but very few wins. it would be interesting to see what were the best performing decks overall.
there is also a missing reference that the "attendance" is on top8s, it can give the idea it's the attendance of a whole tournament :)
besides those details, awesome info.
I do agree with you about all subjects. Ill try to improve in the next article.
I liked it. It's easy to see that you applied yourself by the ammount of information it countains. The videos are nice too. Yes a few small things need improvment but overall it's pretty good.
Ill try to improve the graphics and also the way they are presented.
Nice article, very good Andrea
loved the detail on this post, even if Fae is rather succulent I do like the new dredge and the Death cloud decks, seem utterly nasty :D
Great analysis of the format. Very helpful for anyone who does not have enough time to test thoroughly, and needs to know what to expect in the field.
Great content, but the layout and editing could use some work. Also, not really focused on MTGO.
Ill agree on both issues but As I said I'll be working on the layout for my next articles and about the MTGO Focus issue I'll also improve that in the next one.
Gotta love your work. You just try to cover all the aspects on the issues you are analyzing, and what's cool is that you can do it with all the videos and images, I like it, great article, keep them coming.
Ty all for your support. o/
This will remove 5 of the 10 Planeswalkers from the game at instant speed for 1W, a real bargain. It also gets rid or most of the big nasties in Conflux...
Good article.
I actually like it too but Having discussed it with some portuguese pros it came to my attention that in ext it wont do much besides being a nice weapon vs AiR and Sulfuric Vortex. Bur still path to exile will be better.
What about bitterblossom as a target?
At this moment only Bitterloaam uses it consistenly besides a few fae builds. Its a very good target in standard I just dont see it as a threat in extended to justify the inclusion of an anti card even if it can be good vs other stuff.
I don't think Celestial Purge will shine in Extented, at least yet. Not many decks play white and it surely isn't a reason for a splash. AIR is a bad deck and there are so many other solution for it. Other cards that it deals with there are other, probably more versatile solutions.
I've seen a couple of decks already with Conflux and something that realy struck me out was a new Loam / Terravore like. I'll leave here the list as part of the article since I didnt talk about the Knight of the Reliquiary and Maybe I should've.
creature [12]
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Knight of the Reliquary
4 Tarmogoyf
instant [6]
3 Darkblast
3 Path to Exile
sorcery [13]
2 Crime / Punishment
4 Life from the Loam
3 Raven's Crime
3 Thoughtseize
1 Worm Harvest
artifact [3]
1 Engineered Explosives
2 Umezawa's Jitte
land [26]
3 Barren Moor
4 Bloodstained Mire
2 Forest
2 Ghost Quarter
1 Godless Shrine
1 Mutavault
1 Overgrown Tomb
1 Plains
3 Swamp
1 Temple Garden
3 Tranquil Thicket
4 Windswept Heath
60 cards
Sideboard:
2 Kataki, War's Wage
2 Loxodon Hierarch
2 Extirpate
1 Cranial Extraction
2 Damnation
1 Thoughtseize
3 Seal of Primordium
2 Pithing Needle
15 cards
Here is the link: http://www.deckcheck.net/deck.php?id=23196
Check it out.
Extensive and Complete
just like de format ;-) EXT
Keep Going Andrea =D