Fans,
My Files is at the printers and we will make sure that all preorders will make it to you before the holidays!
If you have not purchased one, order a copy for a friend as a gift (500+ pages of Magic’s past by one of its best writers)!
Thanks for your patience and support!
Happy Thanksgiving from the Top8Magic Crew!
Happy Thanksgiving!
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If you like to gamble, start playing with this deck:
Crypt Combo AKA “Crabs”
4 Crypt of Agadeem
4 Drowned Catacomb
4 U/x Fetch Land
2 B/x Fetch Land
5 Island
2 Swamp
4 Hedron Crab
2 Kederekt Leviathan
2 Fatestitcher
4 Extractor Demon
4 Rotting Rats
4 Architects of Will
4 Viscera Dragger
4 Monstrous Carabid
3 Corpse Connoisseur
4 Grim Discovery
4 Traumatize
Sideboard:
4 Duress
4 Blister Beetle
4 Disfigure
3 Pithing Needle
I haven’t played the sideboard listed here, but its what the people who are placing in MODO events are playing so it must be good!
If you don’t know how this deck works, its pretty simple: mill yourself with Crab and/or Traumatize, mise a Crypt somewhere in the first 4 turns, then make a bunch of mana with at least one crypt activation and Unearth FTW. If your opponent has infinite life, then you just mill them out via Extractor Demon triggers.
Of course it is not always that simple, because rarely is your hand the right combination of Crypt/Crab/Traumatize/Grim Disco. The nut draws with this deck easily win turn 4, but the sub-nut draws have you mulliganning to 5 and hoping to get there on Cycling.
Because of the inconsistencies (I have played somewhere in the range of 100 games with this deck, that’s how badly I wanted it to be good) the matchup against any deck that can goldfish a turn 4 win is pretty bad. Red Deck Wins is virtually impossible (although i have not tried the Disfigures). Against Boros you can get there off a heavy Rotting Rats draw and chump blocking until you can systemagically set up your graveyard. Jund is a favorable matchup, especially if they do not have main deck Jund Charms, and double especially if they don’t have Goblin Ruinblaster main. Mono-Green is also favorable since they do not get nearly as fast a start as any of the decks mentioned previously. Against both Jund and Green, Unearthing (or even hard casting!) a Leviathan turn 4 or 5 will give you more than enough time to complete your kill.
You can’t really beat any deck that has Goblin Ruinblaster, Ajani Vengeant, Acidic Slime, or any of the blue enchantments that turn your land into something other than Crypt of Agadeem.
Against control decks (if you manage to spot one online, which is very rare) you are practically a lock game 1 because they can’t interact with you at all while you goldfish your win. Post board you can just side in your duress/negate and take your time. Set up your graveyard and you can even make them discard their whole hand via rats if you want before you attempt to go off.
In essence, this deck is a total crap shoot against the format. If I were to run it at states tomorrow, I would predict a 5-3 finish, probably good enough for like, 6 packs. I do think this is a deck to keep an eye on, however, should the format slow down at all. If any kind of control deck emerges from Worlds (happening this week for anyone who didn’t know), or if for whatever reason the red decks fall from popularity, then it is possible that Crypt Combo could be very well positioned for states. I am certainly going to keep it in mind, but in the meantime, there are quite a few other decks that have caught my eye, which I will write about as I get the chance to play with them.
As a side note: I have finally returned to Magic, and intend to start posting here again regularly! I have been pretty busy with a lot of other stuff the past few months and had to put the game on the back burner. In addition to having time to play, I have installed Windows on my Mac, and can now play MODO, which is absolutely insane. If you feel like playing some games, chat me up in game (my name is sloppystack, just like Twitter! PS: Follow me (and top8games, fivewithflores, and mattwang97) on Twitter!).
~WillPoP
Hey Top8Magicians,
I posted a Bonus Exercise in this week’s Limited Information <http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazine/Article.aspx?x=mtg/daily/li/64> and I wondered what you would do.
You’ve just drafted and constructed the following deck:
|
Main Deck 40 cards |
||
| 10 Forest 1 Kazandu Refuge 7 Mountain 18 lands |
1 Baloth Woodcrasher 1 Frontier Guide 1 Geyser Glider 2 Grazing Gladehart 1 Greenweaver Druid 1 Highland Berserker 1 Mold Shambler 1 Oran-Rief Recluse 1 Oran-Rief Survivalist 1 Shatterskull Giant 1 Territorial Baloth 1 Timbermaw Larva 1 Torch Slinger 1 Vastwood Gorger 15 creatures |
1 Gigantiform 1 Harrow 2 Inferno Trap 1 Khalni Heart Expedition 1 Savage Silhouette 1 Vines of Vastwood 7 other spells |
You sit down for your first match and draw this hand:
Forest, Mountain, Mountain, Khalni Heart Expedition, Territorial Baloth, Baloth Woodcrasher, Gigantiform
Do you keep this hand on the play? How about on the draw? Why?
XOXO,
Steve
One last match with BeckerDotDec
Mike and switched decks again…this time to the deck formerly known as Mono Cascade. Apparently Jon Becker was peeved (imagine that) that the deck was not actually “mono-anything” — color, cascade, what-have-you. Mike has taken to calling the deck BeckerDotDec in honor of our curmudgeonly friend. This was definitley my favorite deck that we played on the evening although it felt pretty cumbersome at times with all the do nothing turns and come-into-play tapped lands. Still it was a lot of fun to play and really highlighted for me just how powerful Blightning is against the Planeswalkers strategies we kept seeing on MTGO that evening.
Here is the list:
BeckerDotDec
4 Bituminous Blast
4 Blightning
4 Bloodbraid Elf
4 Captured Sunlight
4 Deny Reality
4 Enlisted Wurm
4 Esper Charm
4 Baneslayer Angel
2 Arcane Sanctum
1 Arid Mesa
4 Crumbling Necropolis
4 Exotic Orchard
1 Forest
1 Island
1 Jungle Shrine
1 Mountain
2 Plains
4 Rupture Spire
4 Savage Lands
2 Seaside Citadel
1 Swamp
Sideboard:
3 Ajani Vengeant
4 Maelstrom Pulse
4 Rhox War Monk
4 Lightning Bolt
