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By: whiffy penguin, George Efelis
Sep 25 2008 2:28pm
4.5
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Hello every one its been a while what with the site down and im ready to talk shop. There is a lot going on in the world of magic at the moment. A few things of intrest is that Shadowmoor will be released this week so we get a new set to play around with.

There are a lot of cards that I see getting tried out in shadowmoor. You already know how I feel about Vexing Shusher, Wheel of Sun and Moon, and Guttural Response. Other cards to look out for are (Swans of Bryn Argol) who can combo out with Chain of Plasma or Seismic Assault. Kitchen Finks would not surprise me if they made it into classic. They sit in the  three drop spot which is wonderful as most decks are clogged on twos, they gain you life which is always a plus and barring Swords to Plowshares he comes back for more.  Tattermunge Maniac will be a huge boon to R/G agro, its a 2 drop for 1 mana joining up with Kird Ape along with other one drop stars Mogg Fanatic and Grim Lavamancer. That is  quite a boost out of the gates following up you can land a Tarmogoyf or drop a Skullclamp to dig for burn or make trades unfavorable. Alongside Everlasting Torment you have a potent deck that can play a very strong beatdown plan and have a fistfull of burn to reach out if the ground is clogged up or wiped away.  Fulminator Mage will gain a bit of testing but may bear no fruit, still a card to keep in mind though. If Godhead of Awe werent so cost restrictive I would say its playable but the mana cost is darn near imposible.Manamorphose is a perfect tool for Storm it fixes your mana gives you plus one to storm and cycles for a card, an excelent new staple for the archtype. This next card is not going to be busted until december, but should still be workable to some extent. Painter's Servant is turning heads in Vintage and im sure Legacy isnt to far behind on this guy. He will open combo up to be multi facted having even more angles of attack. Servent and Grindstone from Tempest is a two card colorless combo that ends the game for six mana.  Runed Halo is going to be a multi angle answer for white decks. The halo can turn off every combo kill card and will shut out groundpounders as well.This little angelic kithkin is going to be able to do a lot of things for your deck for the low cost of 4 sb cards you get to add in other fringe cards as the halos will be good in half a dozen match ups.

In what I feel is a huge develpoment we have been given the First preveiw card of Master's Edition II, and it's a doozy. Mana Crypt is so far out of the power range I was expecting that I was stunned. Awe and fear co-existed in me as I tried to contemplate the ramifications of Mana Crypts introduticon to the format. Even if it is auto restricted the coming of Lotus Petal two and a half months later will give combo the boost it needed to be a dominate force in the meta game. As of now it is being subdued by lack of fast mana such as the last two cards. After digesting crypt one wonders if there will be cards on par with its power such as Mana Drain, Land Tax, Fastbond, or any of the black tutors. We will be looking at a very different meta, gone will be most fringe decks as the power in the format is greatly increased. Although the power spike will kill off more then a few decks I expect tempest ara classic to be at a completly new level while introducing new arch types. I am so excited and scared I can hardly wait till September to see what else we have going on.

Im not sure how important the restrictions of Ponder, Brainstorm, and Merchant Scroll are to classic but if we get a lot of fun artifacts from MED 2 I wouldnt be surprised if they gave something the restriction. But then again one also has to wonder how closley they look at Classic as it is an online format only and is still very new. Other news is that there will not be a time where Ravinica shock lands and Wasteland exist without at least five of the original duals.  This is nice because it was a large concern to have to play shock lands around Wasteland giving you a huge disadvantage. On the other side this means we have to wait till December to get Tempest which is very close to the release of MED 2 so I  would suggest saving now cause it will be a busy holiday season for classic staples.

I recently opened a Reveillark in a draft and figured that building a Flash Lark deck wasent a bad deviation of my time . The lark kill is inferior to the Disciple of the Vault and artifact men kill but it frees up seven spots in the main deck. These seven give you a lot of wiggle room and i think i may have stumpled onto an interesting deck at the very least. I'll post it now and go over a little bit about my unorthodox cards and how the deck is supose to work as it is different from the more standard Flash decks. 

Oatmeal Flash

The Combo
1x Flash
3x Protean Hulk

The Kill

1xMogg Fanatic
1xCarrion Feeder
1xBody Double
1xReveillark

Search

4xMystical Tutor
3xMerchant Scroll
3xLim-Dul's Vault
1xSummoner's Pact
1xVampiric Tutor
2xReclaim
4xBrainstorm

Protection

4xForce of Will
4xPact of Negation
1x Echoing Truth
1xChain of Vapor

 

Distraction/Back up
4xTarmogoyf

The Mana

4xPolluted Delta
2xFlooded Strand
2xWatery Grave
2xBreeding Pool
1xHallowed Fountain
1xIsland
1xSwamp
4xGemstone Caverns
3xChrome Mox

The Sideboard

4xLeyline of the Void
4xThoughtseize
4xBoseiju, Who Shelters All
3xDivert

 

 

 

The deck is fairly straight forward. Get a Flash and a Protean Hulk to win the game consisting of a combo loop that goes as follows. Play out the combo, hulk dies because you choose not to pay 3GG. His trigger goes off and you go fetch out Body Double and Carrion Feeder. The double copys the hulk and the feeder sac's the new hulk to go fetch out a Reveillark and a Mogg Fanatic. Once you have done this you start the loop of sac mogg deal a point, sac lark to the feeder recuring the Body Double and the fanatic. The double copys the lark, continue until your opponent is dead.

Consistency is the reason to pilot Flash and this deck has so very much, turn 3 wins are the goal of the deck but i have been able to score turn 1 and 2 wins in the matches i've played. Because of the quality search spells you can most likley assemble the  2 card combo very quickly. You theoreticaly have TWELVE copys of Flash and Protean Hulk. For refrence 3x hulk+3x vault+1x pact+4x mystical+1x vamp tutor=12.  Switch hulk for scroll and pact for flash to get the other 12.

Tarmogoyf is super interesting in this deck. You can go ahead and drop him early to either throw your opponent off the flash trail confusing him as to what you are actually playing, or using them as a wall to give you time against an aggressive start. One of the most interesting things i've come across with this build is the ease that you can switch from combo to beatdown. For instance if getting the combo is too akward you can always play a lim-dul's vault and try to stack some goyfs on top of your deck to go beatdown, or if you have assembled the combo in hand and are unable to score a kill you could always go fetch out three Tarmogoyfs with the hulk trigger and swing in for about 12-15 damage out of nowhere. The good times keep coming with goyf when your opponent taps out to deal with it they give you a window to resolve your combo. If they choose not to deal with it then he may just win you the game.  I actually discovered this next trick while writing this article. If your oppnent has a Mogg Fanatic down you cant combo out because they can just off your (Carrion Fedder), but if you have a goof down then you can sac it to the feeder in response to a leathel mogg ping. Lastly the goyfs give you the abilaty to fight through Leyline of the Void instead of going to the trouble of finding a bounce spell. I am high on goyfs over Stifle & (Phyrexian Dreadnaught) as it is only one card you need to find and you dont have to jump through any hoops to play them out.

The other free slots I used to add in some maindeck bounce spells, an extra Protean Hulk and Reclaim. Targeted discard is not your friend and Reclaim will help you get back a flash for the win. With the extra hulk (used to only run two in the disciple kill) you will find your combo easyer and less likely die to a Summoner's Pact.

I would like to take a moment to say how good Lim-Dul's Vault is. I beleive it may be the best card in the deck because it can single handedly find you the combo. Imagine that you have some amount of free counterspells and are in no worry about your life total. When you play the vault with enough life or luck you can stack you deck to have brainstorm on top followed by Flash, and Protean Hulk getting your entire combo in one tutor. If you already have a brainstorm in hand you could stack the combo and a Pact of Negation to protect it.

You have eight free counters to work with and a host of manipulation. You should be able to acquire the hand you need to beat any deck within the first four turns. Brainstorm is a very important card in this build because the mana base is made  to play all your kill parts out, except mogg, but it is very slow to get there manually. Having them in your hand is very very bad. This is a reason I run fetch lands, they combo with the brainstorms and also vaults. Simply put you really need your four kill cards in your deck to make things nice and easy. Although it is really fun to hardcast a Reveillark and fly over for some serious face smashery, it is easyer to just let the deck to what it does best which is comboing out.

This list runs twenty mana sources. You have 4x (Gemstone Cavern)s and 3x Chrome Mox to give you fast mana. I'd like to say that 40% of the time on the draw you will have two mana to start the game with. Starting with two mana is like cheating. Uh-oh i drew into a turn one combo with protection happens enough of the time, it really is the only selling point for me to play the deck. The mana is built to be able  to play your kill out if need be which is why the numbers are a little strange. The fetchlands will help insure that you dont draw to many lands while also flushing away garbage for you.

The sideboard is fairly straight forward.(Boseiju,Who Shelter's All) is a very nice card to break out of a Counterbalance lock or just blank a landstill or thresh players non-Stifle hand. It seems to have fallen out of favor in more recent flash decks i've seen but I still think it is great at what it does. Leyline of the Void is a consession to the power of flash, dredge, and to a lesser extent thresh.(this build having goyfs i dont want to lock out there grave yard though) Thoughtseize is here for when  your opponent has a lot of either reactionary things such as Stifle or Trickbind or when they have dabilatating plays like Meddling Mage, Samurai of the Pale Curtain, True Believer, or Counterbalance. They are also a good switch out when your opponent is going to try to race you. Step one board out Pact of Negation. Step two board in Thoughtseize. Step three rip away there clock. I'm trying Divert out. I think it has a lot of potential, the first thing I though of was moving around counterspells but there are alot more options. You can turn burn right back in a RDW player's face. You can move removal aimed at your goyf to an opponents. How about if you go ahead and make yourself discard instead of me. Lot's of options in that card , cant wait to see someone really surprise the meta with it. A last note on sbing if you are on the play it is correct to sb out all or up to two Cavern's as they are dead on the play.The reason it's half or all is if you are siding in Boseiju.

With the testing i have had on this build (not a whole heck of a lot sorry) it is in the winning percentile. It like most flash decks has a hard time against Counterbalance and heavy permission decks, but an early tarmogoyf is really interesting for them to make a misplay for you to capatlize on. People harp on combo because it does not have the tools to race aggro ...yet. One day very soon (possibly December 8th) it will be able to race. My point is that Tarmogoyf puts up a solid wall to give you time to dig. I have won with goyf just sitting there detering my opponents forces while i tutor up my combo. In essence it is still the smae old flash deck with roughly the same matchup percentages but it is the dual nature of the kill that is a reason to play this. It has a slightly worse match up vs Landstill, but it gets a stronger percentage in almost all the other non Counterbalance archtypes. I guess in a world with out fast mana, combo has to adapt to make a long game happen. Heaven help us when we have Lotus Petal and Mana Crypt.

On a closing note this is a powerful deck, theres no denighing it. It is a very skill intensive deck though. I'm familiar with flash from back in december and have a strong understanding on how to play aganst flash, but playing it is kind of hard. I make at least one misplay per game and at least one serious blunder per match. It is frustrating to have to baby step with a marathon runner but you will constantly trip over your feet until you have gained the insight into how the deck really runs.  If you like a glass cannon then this is your deck. You will have alot of sucess but if the meta turns on you you will be playing some very diffacult magic.

Sorry about the length of the article but i was very time contrained this week and i plan on having something a little meater for you either next week or the week after. So thanks for reading and i'll see ya here in seven.

P.S. 2 Points for whoever can figure out why i named the deck  Oatmeal Flash.

1 Comments

Guess by walkerdog at Thu, 09/25/2008 - 17:57
walkerdog's picture

I'm guessing because you added Goyfs, ala Ceph Breakfast, making it a breakfast cereal combo deck, named in the old style?