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

The Top 8 London Champs lists have been posted on MTGChamps.co.UK and it has Faeries and Merfolk on the top of the heap. The Faeries list that won is sporting some unusual maindeck cards including Peppersmoke and Tidings. The former seems like it would be dreadful against 5Color but if you are expecting a field full of Faeries and Stonybrook Bannerets it makes a lot more sense. Tidings, on the other hand, is something of a mystery but I will certainly be building this tonight on MTGO and trying it on myself.

Faeries
Carlos Moral - Winner
London Champs 2008

4 Bitterblossum
4 Spellstutter Sprite
4 Mistbind Clique
4 Scion of Oona
4 Cryptic Command
4 Agony Warp
3 Thoughtseize
2 Peppersmoke
2 Tidings
2 Broken Ambitions
1 Loxodon Warhammer
1 Oona’s Grace
2 Faerie Conclave
3 Swamp
4 Island
4 Underground River
4 Sunken Ruins
4 Secluded Glen
4 Mutavault

Sideboard:
2 Razormane Masticore
1 Loxodon Warhammer
1 Oona’s Grace
2 Peppersmoke
2 Flashfreeze
3 Infest
2 Jace Beleren
2 Persuasion

The second place list was the Merfolk deck that is becoming a metagame fixture with Stonybrook Banneret into Sage’s Dousing giving the aggro deck up to eight Dismiss-like counterspells. This feels a lot  like an old school fish deck and can be incredibly frustrating to play against when they counter everything you try and draw a card each time. This list is incredibly straightforward and eschews the Knights of Meadowgrain that are in some of the other lists I have seen of late. Many people have written this archetype off in Standard with the rotation of Lord of Atlantis but Wake Thrasher has stepped in and gets plenty large all on his own.

Dissmisive Merfolk
London Champs 2008
Charlie Grover - Finalist

4 Cursecatcher
4 Silvergill Adept
4 Stonybrook Banneret
4 Sygg, River Guide
4 Wake Thrasher
4 Merfolk Rejerey
4 Sower of Temptation
4 Sage’s Dowsing
4 Cryptic Command
8 Island
4 Mutavault
4 Wanderwine Hub
4 Mystic Gate
4 Adarkar Wastes

Sideboard:
3 Pollen Lullaby
4 Deft Duelist
4 Burrenton Forge Tender
4 Reveillark

The semifinals were rounded out by a pair of MonoRed Aggro decks and the bottom half of the elimination bracket featured four different archetypes; Elementals, 5-Color Planeswalker, Elves, and an EsperLark deck: Read the rest of this entry »

So one 6-2 player did advance to the Top 8 but as predicted — based on a round two loss to someone who stayed in and lost something like four more matches — MichaelJ’s breakers left him in the dreaded virtual Top 8.

Mike earned a draft set for his efforts, which he promptly repaid to me from a draft gone by.

On the brighter side, Nick Feitel — aka Kephalid — was waiting to play in the finals as I was packing up to head out to meet my wife for dinner. He was playing a WW deck designed by our Mockvitational winner. The deck is called Kithkin Calcano.

Asher took his ridiculous looking deck and rattled off four wins in five rounds. He then packed everything up, dropped from the tournament, and left for what I can only presume is a very hot date. It’s too bad because we are getting a covergence of boring at the top decks — Faeries, Kithkin, and 5-color. I know Asher’s list probably falls under that last heading but it caused a little bit of a stir everytime he played. (Although that could have been people trying to understand how he wedged Mutavaults into the mix.

Preposterous
Asher Hecht
NY States 2008

3 Mistbind Clique
4 Bitterblossom
4 Spellstutter Sprite
2 Broken Ambitions
2 Condemn
4 Doran
4 Cryptic Command
4 Esper Charm
3 Bant Charm
4 Nameless Inversion
4 Vivid Creek
2 Vivid Marsh
4 Reflecting Pool
2 Mystic Gate
3 Yavimaya Coast
4 Secluded Glen
4 Murmuring Bosk
3 Mutavault

Sideboard:
2 Chameleon Colossus
2 Puppeteer Clique
2 Jave Beleren
3 Thoughtseize
1 Comdemn
3 Wrath of God
2 Deathmark

Mike is done. Guttural Response #1 kept a Cryptic Command from resolving but when Mike had to evoke Cloudthresher against Fairies, the second one languished in his hand while Spellstutter Sprite took on the yeoman’s task of countering the green fattie.

Here is the deck he decided to play:

Jund Mana Ramp
Mike Flores
NY States 2008

1 Broodmate Dragon
4 Firespout
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Jund Charm
4 Chameleon Colossus
4 Civic Wayfinder
4 Cloudthresher
2 Farhaven Elf
4 Gift of the Gargantuan
2 Primal Command
4 Rampant Growth
4 Fire-Lit Thicket
5 Forest
1 Mountain
4 Savage Land
2 Swamp
4 Treetop Village

Sideboard:
3 Mind Shatter
2 Shriekmaw
2 Broodmate Dragon
4 Guttural Response
2 Primal Command
2 Lash Out

Round four saw a clash between two top-notch local players. Matt Ferrando aka Matt qualified for this year’s Nationals with his token deck and finished that event with a Top 32 finish. Matt was playing an almost identical list to the Blightning Beatdown list I used to 3-0 the Mock the other night.

His opponent was Christian Calcano, winner of the first ever Top8Magic Mockvitational. Chris had a hand in the design of the Mannequin as a member of Team Unknown Stars. Calcano was running a Cruel Control deck with a little something extra for the red decks after sideboarding — Kiss of the Amesha.

Matt lost game one but seemed like he was going to bust through a mana-strapped Calcsno in game two. Matt’s deck yielded too many lands while Calcano clung to the game by his fingernails. Soon Calcano as fortifying behind Forge Tenders, Finks, and finally he sealed the game with a Kiss of the Amesha into Cruel Ultimatum.

“BDM,” said Matt as he picked up loss number two, “Do you have any sets for a draft?”

One of the great things about doing coverage is that you don’t need to get up at the crack of dawn. I needed a couple of extra hours of sleep this morning after my normally sedentary cat decided to get his hunt on and kill a defensless baby field mouse at 2am.

I got to Neutral Ground as the second of eight rounds was winding down. Early on the top tables were glowing red with Demigod Deck Wins and Blightning Beatdown seemingly on every other seat. White Weenie — or Weenie White as Pierre had me saying in our Berlin Deck Tech — Faeries, and 5-Color variants.

MichaelJ was crammed in at table 16 so we can assume he won Round One but round two was looking bad. I could see from the scorepad that he was down one game and getting beaten down by a Demigod in game two. Mike is never going to win a poker face competition and I could tell he had the answers but not the mana to phrase them.

Mike was playing Jund Mana Ramp and had added Broodmate Dragon as his answer to Demigod — one main and two sideboard. Sure enough he was holding two Broodmate Dragons and two Primal Command but was scuffling on five lands.

Mike was taunted by a Rampant Growth on the final turn and went to 1-1. With 134 players the tournament was just over the 8-round threshhold which meant at least one player with two losses would make the Top 8 but it was unlikely to be Mike with an early loss dragging down his breakers.

If he wanted to play some actual Top 8 Magic he would need to string together at least five straight wins.

The turnout for the Mock was lighter than I would have hoped but probably on par for a last minute event. The participants were MichaelJ playing Fairie Wizards, Matt Ferrando playing a Tokens Update that was descended from his successful Regionals build, Tom Nugent playing the Demigod Deck Wins that Mike suggested on Five With Flores, Will Price playing some rogueish black-white build, and Asher playing a preposterous Doran/Fairies/mono Charms mashup. The odd number and light demands on my time meant I could jump in playing MattF’s Blightning Beatdown.

I played Flores in the first round and smashed him game one. He took the second but I did not realize we were sideboarding. Once Blightning Beatdown transformed into Beatdown Backed By Guttural Response Mike was pretty much cold. I want to play this deck just so I can hawk up all over Cryptic Commands all day.

Round two was something like a 12 game set against Tom and his more midrangy red deck. I think he won two of them. Tom was not playing Mike’s suggested version which had Bitterblossoms — something Mike claims would have reversed the numbers or at least evened them out.

Finally I played against Asher and took two out of three but he did take the next couple of games — just not the ones that counted.

Small sample size and all that bit if past Mocks are to be believed some version of Blightning Beatdown is the deck to play this weekend. Mike hates Shard Volley but had the uncanny knack for eeking out the final damage needed.

MattF’s Blightning Beatdown
3-0 Record
States Mock Tournament

4 Mogg Fanatic
4 Tattermunge Maniac
4 Figure of Destiny
4 Hells Thunder
4 Tarfire
4 Shard Volley
4 Incinerate
4 Blightnimg
4 Flame Javelin
4 Aunties Hovel
4 Ghitu Encampment
4 Graven Cairns
4 Mutavault
4 Sulfurous Springs
4 Mountain

Sideboard:
4 Guttural Response

I don’t think I am going to be able to playing in the States Mock Tournament tonight since I find it hard to play, podcast, and update the site. Theoretically we are going to be doing round by round coverage of the Mock with some deck lists, pictures, and match-up analysis. While everyone else is preparing for playing in States I will be preparing for my Top8Magic coverage duties. If I was going to play I would almost certainly be piloting an updated version of the Standard deck that was featured in the Berlin video coverage. For reference:

Fellowship of the Ring

Erik Ryding and Wilhelm Dubber

Pro Tour Berlin LCQ

4 Chandra Nalaar
1 Elspeth, Knight-Errant
4 Ajani Vengeant
4 Garruk Wildspeaker
1 Sarkhan Vol
4 Wrath of God
2 Naya Charm
4 Fertile Ground
2 Mind Stone
4 Condemn
2 Oblivion Ring
2 Rings of Brighthearth
3 Murderous Redcap
4 Treetop Village
4 Jungle Shrine
3 Reflecting Pool
3 Wooded Bastion
3 Fire-lit Thicket
2 Karplusan Forest
2 Battlefield Forge
2 Brushland

Sideboard:
1 Flameblast Dragon
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Oblivion Ring
1 Burrenton Forge-Tender
1 Hallowed Burial
2 Guttural Response
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Raking Canopy

I have not played around with the decklist enough but Mike and I have been discussing how to fit Savor the Moment into the list. If any decklist was going to overcome the drawback of not untapping on your extra turn it is going to be the list with fourteen Planeswalkers — four of which are Garruck — and Fertile Ground. Of course I have a hard time imagining playing Fertile Ground without my opponent Cryptic Commanding it and bouncing my other Fertile Grounded land.