I have been joking since the introduction of Alara Reborn about building a hand control deck featuring Thoughtsieze, Meddling Mage, Vendillion Clique, Tidehollow Sculler, Runed Halo and Thought Hemorrhage. Courtesy of Glenn Goddard at Sum Mesa Events — the people that flew me out to LA to gunsling at the Conflux Prerelease — comes a more realustic take on that theme with only two colors and a manabase that doesn’t roll over to Anathemancer that earned its pilot a berth at Nationals via a New Mexico Regional Championship.

Dump Truck Update
David Daniel — Top 4
New Mexico Regionals 2009

4 Meddling Mage
4 Sower of Temptation
3 Vendillion Clique
4 Peek
4 Cryptic Command
4 Broken Ambitions
3 Negate
2  Remove Soul
3 Wrath of God
1 Austere Command
4 Path to Exile
4 Mystic Gate
4 Adarkar Wastes
4 Mutavault
4 Faerie Conclave
2 Plains
6 Island

Sideboard:
4 Burrenton Forge-Tender
3 Wall of Denial
3 Windborn Muse
2 Austere Command
2 Pithing Needle
1 Negate

Glenn wrote that when he first caught wind of the Nationals qualifying deck, featuring Peek, from his Regionals he “was pretty skeptical”. With such a known metagame the Meddling Mage can often accurately nail a key card based simply on the first land drop of the game. If you saw Windbrisk Heights you would no doubt name Spectral Procession and Spinerock Knoll might entice you to name Swans or Seismic Assault. But the aforementioned Peek means you don’t even need to guess if you don’t want to — you can either cantrip-look at their hand or even disrupt two cards with a Vendillion Clique into Meddling Mage.

Grand Prix Anaheim 2003 Champion Ben Rubin

The deck reminds me of Ben Rubin’s Dump Truck deck from a half decade of Extended seasons ago that won Grand Prix Anaheim with four Meddling Mage and a mere pair of Peeks.

Dump Truck
Ben Rubin — Champion
GP Anaheim 2003

4  Caves of Koilos
4  Flooded strand
3  Island
2  Plains
4  Polluted Delta
2  Skycloud Expanse
2  Swamp
2  Underground River
3  Exalted Angel
4  Meddling Mage
4  Shadowmage Infiltrator
4  Brainstorm
3  Deep Analysis
3  Diabolic Edict
1  Disenchant
4  Duress
2  Peek
3  Seal of Cleansing
1  Smother
1  Tsabo’s Web
4  Vindicate

Sideboard:

4  Chill
3  Chrome Mox
1  Damping Matrix
1  Energy Flux
1  Lobotomy
1  Sphere of Resistance
1  Upheaval
3  Vampiric Tutor

I have not actually played with the deck yet but Glenn reports that it has favorable match-ups against Black-white Tokens, Green-white Tokens, Bant, Turbo Fog, and Sanity Grinding. He suspects — like I do — that it has a good match up against Cascade Swans but that deck was barely on the scene when this debuted two weekends ago. One thing that may work against this deck is a reportedly bad match-up against Faeries, which may be on the rise in the wake of Grand Prix Barcelona.