The other day, right before crawling into bed, I decided to stop by StarCityGames and see what was on tap for the next day. (They update at midnight.). The articles seemed of the typical fare for this time of year - Block Constructed stuff and Oscar Tan teaching Type 1 - but when I saw the word"Extended" in a headline, it really jumped out at me. Extended is, after all, my favorite format, and last year's Extended season was the most fun and successful (from a brokenness standpoint) format ever. And when I saw the name Mind's Desire preceding said headline, I knew I'd be up for at least a few more hours.

First things first: I totally skipped over the article, built the decklist on Apprentice, and took it for a test drive - and I have to say that my hat's off to you, Mr. Caleb Foth! I've been thinking of janky ways to play my Desires next season, but so far none of them have panned out; it's one of those cards that takes a hold of you so tightly that you can't put it down no matter how techy your ideas seem. The deck works much like I expected it to, using Snap, Cloud of Faeries, and Frantic Search to generate mana with Sapphire Medallions and Nightscape Familiars - but really, Caleb does an ample job explaining it in his article, as I found out when I finally got back around to reading it.

What did strike me about the article was Foth's supposed matchup percentages and the Ferrett's disclaimer. Will Desire be banned in Extended after Worlds? I wouldn't bet on it.

There are a number of questions raised by the match analyses we were given, and thus the credibility of the decks performance is somewhat shady. The Ferrett said he was hesitant to post an article that claimed dominance on the whole field - but several decks, including WW/Fiends, Aluren, Tinker, and Suicide Black were missing completely. Extended is a rich landscape, and that can't be ignored. Also, there were several cards and strategies that could disrupt the combo, and I thought of more than a few of them within five minutes after goldfishing with the deck. Those cards would have to be addressed before it would be really broken.

Firstly, in my goldfishing, I never really got the combo going before turn 4 or 5, though I did consistently hit my fundamental turn (the turn of the combo) around then. While that's not really a problem, the deck plays few ways to protect itself in the meantime, let alone disrupt your opponent.

While Snap will let you overcome Reanimator (and sometimes Hermit), it's less effective against things like Lackey Sligh from Masters Yokohama, I found very quickly as dug out the deck. As far as that matchup went, using a modified version of Jelger Weigersma's list with more burn, I lost almost every time the Goblin Lackey/Goblin Goon draw came up. Since unlike other powerful, blue,"forget about your opponent and win" solitaire combos, this one contains no cards with the line"you gain twenty life," you're highly at the mercy of faster decks, especially because Nightscapes are easily burned out of the way, and even if Snap or chumping with a Cloud does Fog a Goon every now and again, Goblin Piledrivers still come in for insane amounts of beatdown, and you've got nothing to touch them, save for some Misdirectioned burn, post board - but that doesn't stop Seal of Fire. I went six out of ten, but the matchup seemed highly draw-dependant, and I'm a lot better than my friend Kris - so that somewhat skews things.

The Rock, being somewhat slow, was a very good match. I took an 8/10 record against it, but that doesn't begin to mean it totally lacks game. The best strategy we came up with using Darwin Kastle's deck was to Duress and Cabal Therapy the Desire player early, hopefully hitting the Cloud or Snap - or, even better, both - then following up with a Vampiric Tutored Haunting Echoes. This usually will only work pre-boarding, as free counterspells (i.e. Misdirection) once again prove to be combo's best friend. I could also imagine Engineered Plague on Faeries causing some upset, but it never came up. Plus, you still get to untap lands anyway.

Similarly, the Reanimator matchup was pretty much a bye. I didn't lose a game against Dougherty or Budde Reanimator. Even having your hand stripped with Last Rites didn't KO Mind's Desire, as I was able to topdeck what I needed. At first I thought Multani, Maro-Sorcerer would be a wrecking ball, but it turns out that if you chump him for just one turn, or Cunning Wish for Hibernation, he's a pussycat at best. Petradon poses more of a problem, but more often than not I was able to float mana and Snap him after his CIP ability resolved, or chump block, or even get down to five life, find some land, and win. Short of having your hand stripped and then being immediately eaten by a Phyrexian Negator, this match is all yours. I was highly ecstatic at this point, but decided to be fair and let my friend test pilot for a while.

Madness was also not much of a problem. They are a slower than Sligh and generally can't burn your Familiars, so barring a god draw with Wonder, you're in pretty good shape. It went 3/5 against Jeff Cunningham's Madness, and 4/5 against versions with red.

Suicide Black wasn't tested, but I wouldn't count on it being a problem since the deck still beat a Last Rites/Negator draw from Reanimator (though it did mise just a little)

...And that pretty much concludes the really favorable matchups.

The results Caleb claimed against Psychatog are what really made me question what lists he was using and who was playing them how. The most suspicious line was,"The real deal comes down to how many counterspells they can afford to play, and what they think they can afford to counter."

As I see it, there are only two spells worth countering: Snap and Cloud of Faeries, and sometimes Frantic Search. If you keep them from untapping their lands, then you've pretty much beaten them. A slightly modified Eugene Harvey Tog, circa Grand Prix: New Orleans, did quite well when played carefully. While it is permissible to Force Spike Medallions and Familiars early on, for the most part, you should save your counters for the big turn, but there are a lot of ways to disrupt them. You can Smother Faeries in their sleep with Snap on the stack. You can put Mana Short on the stack too. Stifle pretty much did what you'd expect, but a Quash I snuck in worked tremendously well too, as usually you need to Desire a couple of times to get enough spells going to Freeze Tog out, and Quashing with the Storm ability on the stack removes the offending spells. In the end, it was four out of ten for Desire, and Tog won more often than not after sideboarding.

Though Caleb mentions Enchantress, he never lets on which version, so I wonder if he meant Auratog/Elvis at the Buffet Line Enchantress, or Words of Wind Wackier, the combo out of Hiroshima (as a Zelda fan, I hope I can get that name to stick). I didn't have any desire to test the Elvis version, as Wind Wackier is blatantly superior, so I went with that.

My results are quite different than Foth's. While I certainly agree that Wind Wackier (are you choking on the name yet?) really can't bring in anything to stop you, their combo is pretty much as fast as yours, and faster on a good hand, so our results came down to pretty much whoever played first won, barring any major Parising. The best sideboarding plan I had was Hibernation to slow them down - but you only have one and Wackier brings in Lilting Refrains, which is a stronger plan. (And that's the Living Wish version.) There are so many ways to build the deck in order to pretty much hate Desire out and win. Arcane Laboratory comes to mind as an defensive idea for Desire because it hurts your combo, but you can get around it when you want to go off... But they have access to white also, and thus could board Orim's Chant. Our results were a clean 5/10 against Wind Wackier.

The Oath decks (Scrounger/Nishoba, CogniOath, and TurboLand) all brought up a major weakness with this Desire build: You see, Brain Freeze doesn't actually kill your opponent, and each of these decks drove that point home. We didn't win a single game against them 'til we changed the kill card to Tendrils of Agony. Caleb considered this but dismissed it because of the clunky cost, but the way I see it - and my experience holds this to be true - you're usually casting Freeze off of Mind's Desire anyway, so why not play the spell that is actually a death blow? (Not to mention that it prevents Sligh or U/G/r from doing something stupid like untapping and burning the last couple of points through before they draw, though this never came up for me.)

But what did come up was Krosan Reclamation. While using Freeze, all any of these decks has to do to win is cast Reclamation during their upkeep after you've gone off and buy themselves another turn or two to kill you. This was particularly problematic against TurboLand, as they can set themselves up to go infinite off of your combo. How ludicrous is that?

Anyway, TurboLand was, of course, Zvi's winning list from New Orleans as well, posting 4/5 in favor of his pet deck, with Desire's only win after we wised up. Nishoba was my Oath deck of choice, and was 3/5, though I'd pretty much consider it fifty/fifty. To beat Desire, again, stopping Cloud is priority number one.

The exclusion of Aluren in Foth's article I considered truly egregious, because it posted good results at major events all season long, and was the most feared combo at the beginning of last season. This deck has only gotten better, as Tendrils is once again a great kill card and drastically simplifies what sort of hand you need to put together to go off. As a matter of fact, Mattias Jordstedt's Pro Tour: Houston Aluren build - with slight alterations, including the use Vampiric Tutors, Tendrils of Agony, and Wall of Blossoms over a number of his choices - can go off as early as turn 2. This kill came up a couple of times. Desire wound up 3/10 against it, but should probably beat the decks that this has trouble with. (Like, say, the Rock. Yes, I smell a metagame deck...)

That was one of the four problem decks encountered. Maher Tinker was an equally difficult match, but was also very, very draw-dependent. If Tinker came out fast with early Tangle Wire, Metal Worker, and then Upheaval - or any similarly broken start - there was little hope of recovery in time. The Tinker/Mishra's Helix plan also works if you can pull it off before Desire drops a Medallion... And basically, that's how things went. If Tinker gets the fast start or pins you before you can make your spells cheap, you lose. You can win off of just one land, though, as long as a Familiar or Medallion is on the table, so in those situations, save one in your hand, try to put together what you need during your upkeep with Intuition or Accumulated Knowledge, and win. I was 4/10 with careful play. You may want to put Annuls or something in the board. Further tech for Tinker includes Sphere of Resistance, which works well against Aluren, too. Maher had three in his board; so should you.

The last matchup we tested (because it was 5:30 in the freaking morning and I had to work in a matter of hours) was the one that I suspected Desire couldn't win... And I was proven correct. That match-up was of course the much-maligned Fiends. The deck was designed pretty much as a combo killer after Houston and has proven to be just that. The version I played was:

4x Mother of Runes
4x Whipcorder
4x Phyrexian Negator
4x Meddling Mage
4x Spectral Lynx
3x Waterfront Bouncer
4x Duress
4x Vindicate
2x Cabal Therapy
3x Parallax Wave
24x Lands

Sideboard:
4x Seal of Cleansing
2x Smother
3x Stifle
2x Cabal Therapy
2x Gilded Drake
2x Gainsay

I'll save the explanation of the choices I made here for another day, but all that matters is that after ten games, Desire came up empty-handed for wins. Often, Fiends would go Mother of Runes, Meddling Mage, win... And Desire couldn't really board against it. Boarding for Fiends was easy, though, as Bouncers and Waves go out and pretty much anything but the Drakes can be brought in for more disruption. This was usually two Gainsays, two Therapies, and two Stifles... Though Smother and Seals got their run.

The fact of the matter is that Meddling Mage set to Snap or Cloud of Faeries is a big problem for Caleb's build of Desire, and they don't have many outs - especially when Mama Runes is backing her boy up. In the meantime, Whipcorders and Negators end the game in short order. It's ugly, and I didn't even test WW/u a la Hans Joachim Hom. True Believer shuts down both Freeze and Tendrils, not to mention Pikulas, Orim's Chants and the fact that you could easily replace his Interdicts with Stifles. Oh, and Glowrider... That's Sphere of Resistance on a stick. So if you're still afraid of Mind's Desire, then welcome to your deck for this Extended season.

Looking back, I'm not surprised that Caleb had immediately good results, because he put together a great deck - and whenever a new deck emerges, it takes some time for players to figure it out. But like I said, I don't think we have a monster on our hands. Many people were predicting the banning of Aluren or Vampiric Tutor last season, but nothing ever proved to be that problematic. I suspect as much is true of Desire. It's no phantom menace, but there are many ways for many decks to beat this one - so unless some pro comes along and blows it totally wide open, I'd count on enjoying another wildly diverse, open, and balanced field for next Extended season.

Mick Circo