The new Type II is here! Down with broken combos and turn 4 kills! Bring back the concept of playing with your opponent instead of comboing him out on turn 4 or less! Bring back creature combat! Bring back the good burn spells! Okay, maybe not that last line (as red is still screwed for really solid burn spells in type II), but overall you have to love where Standard is going - unless you're a rampant combo player, but we all know they're not human and don't count. Grin.

I think WOTC has made a very strong statement with the new Standard: There will not be any more degenerate combos. By degenerate, I mean the decks that win entirely in one turn, usually before turn 5, without you getting much of a say about anything. This game is about interacting with and playing against a opponent; a deck that ignores its opponent except to go "Soul Feast you again" in excess of five times is NOT a fun deck. Combo decks have nothing to do with the metagame. The only interaction they have with it is to judge if they are consistently faster at 'going off' than the fastest aggro deck is at killing them. If so, they get played a lot.

Okay, enough ranting. Some of my old time readers from the MagicCampus.com days might remember the writeup I did for 5CG. It's always been a fascination, and now I've discovered a horrifying fact. Brace yourselves...








You can do it with all commons in Nov Type II.

No kidding, no joking - it's real. There are even cards that reward you for playing multiple different types of basic land! What are you waiting for? Oh yeah... the decklist!

5CG madness

4x Harrow
4x Nomadic Elf
4x Trained Armodon
4x Skyshroud Ridgeback
4x Blastoderm

A little bit of beatdown and a whole lot of mana consistency. Harrow and Nomadic Elf offer very good and solid mana help, and the elf is also a grizzly, making the possibility of a fast creature rush almost a real threat. Trained Armodon and Blastoderm make for really nice and threatening damage sources.

Here's the tough part, though. What else do you want to put in? You can choose any type II legal common. Stop and think of the possibilities for a few moments: ANY common. It helps if they don't have double-colored mana in the casting cost, but sometimes you can even get away with those. Here's what my deck has gone with during its play testing run:

4x Counterspell (iffy to run because it's two blue...but with all the expensive late-game bombs Invasion brought, it's always good to be able to say 'no.')

4x Worldly Counsel- It's the bomb search card. Two mana, go through the x top cards of your library, where x is the number of different basic land types you have in play (hereafter known as the term 'domain mechanic'). After a Harrow it lets you go three deep - later in the game, five deep. The Domain spells get stronger as the game drags on, and trust me, without a viable combo deck (YET!) the games will drag a bit.

3x Scorching Lava- Just say no to Nether Spirit! That's my motto for the new type II. For RR1, you can keep it from ever recursing again. Too bad Nether is played in blue decks with counterspells......

4x Tribal Flames- You'll hear the battlecry soon: "Break Tribal Flames!" It's certainly close. If you get all five basics out, this is one of the most efficient burn cards ever. Also a surprisingly good finisher.

4x Disenchant- If you play white, play them. It's a law of the game. You will almost always have a target, and it's the easiest answer to Parallax Wave and Saproling Burst that I can think of.

3x Soul Strings- My least favorite card so far. The theory is to use it late game to drag Blastoderms back from the graveyard, but there are a lot of times it just sits there not doing anything. Could be changed for Terror before I take this to a tourney.

12x forest
2x of each other basic land.

You did read the above, right? I am going to take a all-common deck to a area tourney that's notorious for net decking, $100 decks, and more. And I'm going to kick some teeth in. There's NOTHING this deck cannot handle except for VERY large creatures (especially fliers) - and even then, that's what the sideboard is for. Am I insane? Probably so, but if I win the looks on the 'Net deck players' faces will be worth all the pain.

The sideboard is a very tough proposition, especially since all good 'hoser' cards (cards that more or less shut down a certain strategy or color) are almost never commons. If you think about it, how many cards in a good sideboard are ever commons?

Sideboard:
4x Ribcage Spider (anti-fliers)
4x Terror (anti-creature)
4x Llanowar Knight (Nether Spirit isn't a huge threat if it cannot block)
3x Seal of Cleansing (Rising Waters and Cowardice decks, random artifact- or enchantment-heavy decks)

Not the most inspired sideboard ever, but it covers big gaps in the main deck. Topple's also an option, as I'm seeing a lot of the dragons and most the good ones are black and Terror-proof.

Look at it, mess around with the card mix, laugh if you win, try harder if you don't. The games supposed to be fun. Play like it is. I have to apologize for the shortness of this week's article: I'm getting put through a wringer and I'm finally managing to catch up a bit, but it's still a loaded gun of a schedule. Hopefully, I'll have another Commonality next week and another non-commons article to boot.

'Til then, play well,
Jason Standlea