Grand Prix Vancouver

Its qualifier season for Pro Tour Hollywood, which will be held May 23-25, and the format for these events is Extended.  That means we can get a feel for the current Extended metagame by taking a look at the Top 8 decklists for the PT Qualifiers from the past two months.  Mike Flores wrote a nice article found here, that recaps the qualifier season up to this point.  And what we find is a metagame very similar to the one that we've seen in Josh's Extended Play articles located on this site.  That means a very diverse format with viable options in aggro, control and combo.

On the Aggro side you've got your Onslaught era Goblins deck and your Mirrodin era Affinity deck.  I'm sorry to say that other than Auntie's Hovel, Lorwyn block hasn't really altered the deck.  This just reinforces how silly the deck was to begin with.  I think we all know what Affinity does at this point.  It's even more of a block deck than Goblins.  There's also Domain Zoo, aka Gaea's Might Get There, whose curve tops out at a CC of 3, and plays the best weenie creatures in each color.  If none of those decks tickle your fancy, then you can always go with Red Deck Wins and burn your opponent out.  There's a large variation of RDW which may splash Green for Tarmogoyf, Black for Dark Confidant, or both to give the deck a little more punch.

If you prefer your creatures be a little bigger, then you can choose from several of the  decks that go with Doran, the Siege Tower, Loxodon Hierarch, or Spiritmonger as their fatty of choice and try to play a big Death Cloud for the win.  You can see lists for these decks in the Flores article mentioned above. 

On the Control side, the best deck appears to be Patrick Chapin's  Next Level Blue.  It runs the Counterbalance/Sensei's Divining Top combo with Tarmogoyf, a Trinket Mage or Living Wish-based tool box, and a whole bunch of blue cards like Sower of Temptation to steal your opponent's creatures.

If you want to go with Combo, then there's several options.  The first is Dredge, in which you do silly things with Bridge from Below.  Most Pros say this is the most powerful deck in Extended, but it also receives the most hate, so therefore may not be the best deck.  The durable TEPS deck is still around with its Mind's Desire into Tendrils of Agony kill.  If you rather play with enchantments, then Enduring Ideal might be the way to go.  But the newest combo deck comes to us courtesy of the Morningtide Rare Reveillark.  You can find the combo in the Flores article, but I'm going to go through it here, visually, just so I know that I know it.  They say you don't really know something until you can explain it to someone else, so here we go:

Bubble Hulk Combo

Step 1.  Cards you need in hand	+
Step 2. Put Protean Hulk into play with Through the Breach
Step 3.  When Protean Hulk goes to the graveyard, search your library for:	+
Step 4. Use Body Double to copy Protean Hulk.  Sacrifice Body Double to Carrion Feeder.
Step 5. Body Double's Hulk ability triggers. Search your library for:	+		Step 8. Body Double comes into play as a copy of Reveillark, leaving the same board position as Step 5.  Repeat Steps 6 and 7 until opponent is dead.
Step 6. Sacrifice Mogg Fanatic, OPPONENT TAKES 1 DAMAGE! Sacrifice Reveillark to Carrion Feeder.		Step 7. Reveillark's leaves play ability triggers. Body Double has a power of 0, so return it to play copying Reveillark.  Also return Mogg Fanatic to play.

And it's just that easy.  6 card combo, with at least 1 card from each color.  Luckily, you only need to cast one of those 6 cards.  If you get the nut draw, you can win Turn 1, but on average it's slower than Dredge.  As with most combo decks, it's too much of a pain to pull off online.  But I still think its fun to look at, and it did win one of the GP trials held the night before Vancouver started. 

So, going into GP Vancouver, there were at least a dozen viable Extended strategies out there, let's see what faired best.

On With the Show

Day One entailed 8 rounds of Swiss, with players needing at least 18 points and a record of 6 - 2 to make Day Two.  As expected, there were a large number of different archetypes were brought to the tournament.  

Colors	Deck Name	Inside the Numbers	Percentage
	RDW		14%
	Next Level Blue		11%
	Doran		10%
	Goblins		7%
	Death Cloud		6%
	Dredge		6%
	Affinity		5%
	Gaea's Might Get There		4%
	Enduring Ideal		3%
	UG Tron		2%
	TEPS		2%
	Other		26%

- Start of the Day  - Made Top 64

The many incarnations of Red Deck Wins lead the way in terms of numbers, comprising 14% of the field.  Frightful of the hate, only 6% played "the most powerful deck in the format" Dredge.  Next Level Blue was the most prevalent control deck at 11%.  Combo in the form of Enduring Ideal and TEPS were played by few, but placed a large percentage in the Top 64, which is an indication of the skill required to pilot these decks.  At most, only one player went with the aforementioned Bubble Hulk deck, which I assume was one of the "Other."

Other stories from Day One:

•  We saw the effect the new Pro Player structure has had on the attendance of GPs.  Only 3 Europeans made the trip to Vancouver, including Raphael Levy, Olivier Ruel, and Solemn Simulacrum himself, Jens Thoren.  The only two Japanese players present were, reigning Player of the Year Tomoharu Saito and GP Stuttgart Winner Shuhei Nakamaura.  Nakamaura said he only came because he booked his flight before he learned of the structure change.  Both Thoren and Nakamaura earned 2 Pro points for making Top 32 by finishing 17^th and 29^th, respectively.  Olivier Ruel got 1 point for 42^nd.
• Following up his undefeated Day One at PT Kuala Lumpur, Paul Cheon came back and had an undefeated Day One at GP Vancouver, going 7 - 0 - 1 with the newest version of Next Level Blue, which he was calling "Previous Level Blue," having removed Counterbalance for more hard counters, like Spell Snare.

Breakdown of Top 64

Colors	Deck Name	Number	Percentage
	RDW		18%
	Next Level Blue		15%
	Death Cloud		10%
	Goblins		10%
	TEPS		7%
	Doran		7%
	Enduring Ideal		6%
	Gaea's Might Get There		6%
	UG Tron		3%
	Dredge		3%
	Affinity		3%
	Other		6%

 - Made Top 64  - Made Top 8

 Day Two saw 6 more rounds of Swiss, and it took 33 points or a record of at least 11 - 3 to make Top 8.  Two extra players got to 33 points, but missed out on tiebreakers.  The aggro decks, Red Deck Wins, Goblins, Gaea's Might Get There, and Affinity made up 37% of the Top 64, but were not able to get a single player into the Top 8.  Remarkably, TEPS which only comprised 2% of the field at the beginning of Day One made up an entire 25% of the Top 8.  And it looks like all that graveyard hate worked, because Dredge was shut out.  From the metagame breakdown its easy to see that the most dominant archetype was  Control, otherwise known as Tarmogoyf and Counterspells.

 Top 8

Headlining the Top 8 of GP Vancouver was Paul Cheon.  Unlike PT Kuala Lumpur, Paul was able to finish strong with a record of 11-1-2.  The Top 8 also contained several unknowns in the form of Marc Bonnefoy and Aaron Paquette, friends from Canada who were both playing TEPS.  Hunter Coale from the USA and Michael Gurney from Canada, who made Top 8 at PT LA in 2000, were both playing with their own versions of Next Level Blue.  It was hometown boy Jason Fleurant that played the lone non-Blue deck in the Top 8 with his  Death Cloud build.  

But the biggest story of the Top 8 was the emergence of the UG Tron deck designed by 2006 US Nationals Runner Up Ben Lundquist.  Ben gave the deck list to Zack Hall from the USA, who rounded out the Top 8 using the same exact 75 cards.  These two were the only ones to make the Top 64 with UG Tron, so let's take a look at what they were playing.

UG Tron Ben Lundquist and Zack Hall GP Vancouver Top 8 Creatures 1 Platinum Angel 1 Sundering Titan 1 Triskelion Other Spells 3 Chrome Mox 4 Condescend 1 Engineered Explosives 4 Gifts Ungiven 1 Life from the Loam 2 Mindslaver 3 Moment's Peace 4 Remand 3 Repeal 4 Simic Signet 4 Thirst for Knowledge 1 Tormod's Crypt Lands 1 Academy Ruins 3 Breeding Pool 1 Flooded Strand 1 Island 1 Lonely Sandbar 1 Polluted Delta 1 Snow-Covered Island 2 Tolaria West 4 Urza's Mine 4 Urza's Power Plant 4 Urza's Tower Sideboard 1 Ghost Quarter 2 Indrik Stomphowler 4 Tarmogoyf 3 Threads of Disloyalty 3 Tormod's Crypt 1 Triskelion 1 Venser, Shaper Savant

The deck has enough counter magic to stall until it can complete the Urzatron, then uses Gifts Ungiven and Life from the Loam to set up an infinite lock with Academy Ruins and Mindslaver.  The unique element of the deck appears to be the Tarmogoyfs in the sideboard.  In many instances, players would side out much of their creature removal after Game 1, only to be facing a beatdown from the Goyfs in Game 2 with no answers in hand.

Quarterfinals: In the first quarterfinal, Paquette and Bonnefoy played a TEPS mirror match.  Bonnefoy won the coin flip, which meant he got to suspend the first Lotus Bloom in games 1 and 3.  Boring.  Bonnefoy advances 2-1 in the only Top 8 match to see a game 3.  In separate quarterfinal matches, Ben Lundquist and Zack Hall were able to get quick Mindslaver locks to each win 2-0 over Coale and Fleurant, respectively.  The Counterbalance-dependent deck of Hunter Coale didn't stand a chance against the 6 CC Mindslaver.  In the final quarterfinal match, Paul Cheon used Spell Snare after Spell Snare to win some silly counter wars and take down Gurney 2 - 0, meaning 3  Control decks and one TEPS made the semis .

Semifinals: After the TEPS mirror in the quarters, we were greeted with the UG Tron mirror between Lundquist and Hall in the semis.  This mirror focused around both players ramping up their mana to play and activate Mindslaver with enough counter magic in hand to force it through.  In both games, it was the deck's designer, Ben Lundquist that got the Mindslaver first, thus defeating Zack Hall 2-0.

In the other semi, Paul Cheon with Previous Level Blue faced off against Marc Bonnefoy and TEPS.  Cheon felt that TEPS was a bad matchup for him because of the lack of creatures in the TEPS deck.  Paul's only lose in the Swiss was to Bonnefoy and his TEPS deck, but it looked like Cheon learned from the experience.  In both games, Cheon got a Tarmogoyf on the board and then countered the relevant rituals like Lotus Bloom, Seething Song, and Cabal Ritual to prevent Bonnefoy from building enough mana to complete the combo.  Cheon defeats Bonnefoy 2-0.