Forgive my brief absence, but I recently found myself neck-deep in the iron grip of a Methadone binge. This made it not only impossible to write, but to play a match of Magic that didn't make me cringe (even the ones I miraculously won) proved an exercise in bebokerdim. Oh, there'd be moments when the clouds would clear and the sun would shine through and I'd be in complete control - skilled, even - but most if the time I'd end up wanting to hang myself from the shower rod because of all the idiotic mistakes and misplays and fast-clicks.

"Why is your Ink-Eyes just sitting there? I have no creatures… attack me, for the love of god!"

"Caldwell, I'm playing Owling Mine. I don't even run Ink-Eyes, you idiot."

"… What the hell is wrong with me?"

"Impact you for the win."

"gg"

I don't care how many of you claim otherwise, playing Magic while on drugs of any kind is indeed a bad idea. I hope to never do it again, but my life seems to be peppered by these short, reckless chapters and I'm positive there are going to be more, unfortunately. Trying to hold one eye open while dangling a cigarette that hasn't been ashed in twenty puffs out of the corner of my mouth while testing Olivier Ruel's Hand in Hand are the Olympics of the Stupid. Snap out of it! How in the hell do I expect to get better if I screw around like this? Not only am I wasting valuable playtest time, but my opponent, the one with two Bloodthirsted Maulers and a Cloaked Slum, is definitely wondering why in Christ's name I just stuck a Faith's Fetters on his basic Mountain. Good god, man.

I have no real proof, but I'm willing to bet there is a large amount of bong-sucking, beer-chugging Magic Players out there, from the kitchen table all the way up to the winner of Pro Tour Honolulu. I want to lecture you on how much smarter you are while you are stone sober (despite what you think while trashed). As the years of playing Magic click by, you will begin to notice that, holy Jesus, you're actually becoming good at this game. The body count starts to rise. The locals start respecting you, and they ask you, "What do you think of my deck?" You check the pairings at sanctioned tournaments and realize, "Sweet Christ, I'm going to make Top 8," and it feels great. You've probably pumped hundreds - if not thousands - of dollars into this sport, spent countless upon countless hours getting slaughtered and slaughtering others. You've tweaked decks, you've read over every card three times before putting the final touches into your very first creation. You've got playtest partners, both online and off. Your mind is clean, sharp and cruel. Other players expect things out of you. You're doing great.

Then you get the bright idea to smoke a joint after being clean for a few months. "Hey, my girlfriend's mom gave it to me for giving her a ride home from work. What's the harm in a toke or two?"

Oh, precious Lord, I suck. Every move takes five long minutes. Is it my turn? No way! What am I doing? Is that right? Wait. Should I attack first? Yeah, attack first, right, right. THEN cast other stuff. Huh-huh. Oh, boy. Poor Tremnar, the guy's probably sick of waiting on me. Oh yeah, it's the first turn. I'll just lay this land, here.

It's a ridiculous mess, as you can see. If you have any aspirations of ever achieving fame and fortune (har har) playing Magic, your best bet is to stay sharp, and that means lay off the weed and pills and stuff. If you're just some kitchen-table player that likes to take bong rips and knock back a couple-twelve Pabst while having a good ol' time, then keep up the, er, “good work.” I'm not talking to you, and you're probably not reading this. To the rest of you, pull it together. Trust me on this. Even after the joints cease to get you all stupid and giggly and confused and you're just feeding an addiction and you say, "Pot doesn't affect my playing one bit," just take the Caldwell Challenge. And yes, it is an addiction. Try smoking for ten years straight and then stop. You'll go Hulk Smash on your own grandmother, I promise you. Unlike the hard stuff, the cravings go away after a day or two, and then you suddenly realize how smart you really are, even smarter than you thought, and you're happier, and you're capable of doing well at school and/or your job and your social interactions become more genuine. You start to lose weight because Taco Bell actually tastes nasty when you aren't artificially craving food. By god, you'll shape-shift into Ned Flanders practically overnight, and you'll actually enjoy it.

Hi-Diddly-Ho-Hum-Doodily, you sons of bitches.

Let's get to work.

Hand in Hand is so, so much better than the Hawaii House Deck. I've been playing both ad nauseum since the Pro Tour decklists became public. Both are very fun to play. Both wield significant amounts of power. Black and White seems to be everyone's new favorite color combination, and it is so deep that several different builds are possible, unlike, say, a Type 2 Selesnya Deck. So in testing over and over and over, what did I learn about Hawaii House.dec?

As a disclaimer, I am just one man - the Hawaii House was several extremely skilled Magic Players pooling their talent. I'm not calling their deck garbage by any stretch of the imagination. I have built it in cardboard and it does extremely well. I like the deck. But MTGO-wise, it doesn't seem to work as well. I guess the shuffler is broken or something. I spent several long nights ramming the deck through the Tournament Practice room, and this is what I have discovered, and you can consider it Caldwell gospel:

1) Owling Mine rapes it. There's no way around it. Hawaii House plays one spell per turn. Owling Mine likes that. Owling Mine likes that a lot. And right now, one in three matches in the Tournament Practice room is Owling Mine. It's cheap, fun and efficient. Just like your mom.

2) Zoo rapes Hawaii House, and Mark Herberholz knew this. This is why Mark was the one guy from that group of Pro Players who made the Top 8. I believe the highest-placing Hawaii House W/B player was Jelger Wiegersma at nineteenth place (which I'm not saying is shabby).

3) The deck needs Phyrexian Arena to compete at a high level. Arena is to Hawaii House as Early Harvest is to Heartbeat of Spring. Keep Arena off the table and you win. Barring the perfect hand, it has an extremely soft underbelly that Mortify and countermagic have no problem in penetrating.

4) It's slow. While you're busy playing Castigate and Signets and waiting for the dreaded second-turn Basilica to untap, Kird Ape and a Cloaked Mauler are pummeling you. By the time you fire off that Wrath, their repeated Chars and Helixes are pulling your pants around your ankles while the locals spit on you. Believe me when I say this. It's too slow versus Zoo. You have to have the Hierarchs and Fetters in steady supply. If you've exhausted your pinpoint removal and your only hope is resolving Phyrexian Arena, you're already dead.

5) Waiting for that seventh land to cast Angel of Despair is true boredom.

Sure, they have enough board control to deal with most of your threats. It is an extremely good deck. A gruesome collage of Wrath, Putrefy, Last Gasp, Mortify, and Faith's Fetters is no joke. They are, without a doubt, a tank. A slow-moving, guns-blazing-from-every-angle tank. Hand in Hand deals with this by the attrition cards. Ravenous Rats, Castigate, Shrieking Grotesque, Ghost-Council and, Teysa swarm the tank and bang on it with rocks and hammers until it eventually collapses. Put them in topdeck mode and the game is yours. They can only deal with one thing at a time, yet you can cast two or three spells per turn if you need to.

Their final saving grace is Vitu-Ghazi, which you deal with by flying over or smashing through the Saprolings. If a token happens to become Ink-Eyes, whoop-de-diddly-doo, neighbor. The worst that can happen is they pull out a long-dead Ghost-Council or Teysa to Legend-rule yours. Most likely the only thing available is gonna be some Shrieking chump-blocker.

I really like Olivier's Hand in Hand build (and there are many, many like it). I netdecked it card-for-card upon seeing it for the first time. Between the long hours of testing the Hawaii House build, I'd fiddle around with the Hand in Hand. After a week, it dawned on me that I lost fewer matches with Hand than I did with Hawaii. I started paying closer attention to the interactions, I started tweaking, and I started having real fun with the deck.

Here is where I'm at right this second:

Van Der Snoot Hand In Hand Featured by Caldwell Van Der Snoot on 2006-03-19 (Standard) As written about in http://www.starcitygames.com/php/news/article/11513.html Print this deck!
Maindeck: Creatures 4 Dark Confidant 3 Hand of Cruelty 3 Paladin en-Vec 4 Plagued Rusalka 4 Ravenous Rats 3 Shrieking Grotesque Instants 4 Mortify Legendary Artifacts 3 Umezawa's Jitte Legendary Creatures 3 Ghost Council of Orzhova 3 Teysa, Orzhov Scion	Sorceries 4 Castigate Basic Lands 4 Plains 6 Swamp Lands 4 Caves of Koilos 4 Godless Shrine 2 Orzhov Basilica Legendary Lands 1 Eiganjo Castle 1 Shizo, Death's Storehouse	Sideboard: 3 Hand of Honor 1 Paladin en-Vec 3 Phyrexian Arena 3 Last Gasp 2 Cranial Extraction 3 Terashi's Grasp
Download this deck in Apprentice format!		Download this deck in Magic Online Text format!

My third article discussed my post-Guildpact White Weenie with Black Deck. Boy, does Olivier Ruel know how to make Caldwell feel small. Why didn't you tell me? How did I not figure it out? Sure, I can't cast the turn 1 Lantern Kami, turn 2 Leonin Skyhunter, turn 3 Paladin, turn 4 Jitte anymore, but what I've learned from this Pro Tour is that no matter how cheap, creatures should do something besides attack (with exception to Zoo, which just attacks). My version of W/B Aggro was nothing more than vanilla-flyers White Weenie with Bob and Mortify. I pretty much gave up on it and focused on Ravnica Block Constructed and Sealed League. I think a running comment in my previous articles was, "I'll talk about W/B Aggro next week, but for now..." It's not that the deck wasn't good. It just wasn't great. Sure, it could overwhelm opponents and it was pretty fun to play… but what could I say about it that I didn't say about White Weenie? "Uh, it was fun aiming Mortify at Meloku."

Coincidentally, I also ran a Black-Green Hand Disruption deck during that period in time that featured Ravenous Rats, Shortfangs, Hyppies, and Jittes that does the same thing as Hand in Hand does. Hand in Hand just does it better, faster and it scores style points, which goes a long way if you're like me and enjoy a good set of rims.

At first glance, you'll notice the tweaks. I want only three Ghost-Councils. Why? If you play it right, it ain't going to die. Drawing two and three of these things is a pain in the ass.

I also took out the five-costed Okiba-Gang Shinobi. I don't like tapping down on my fourth turn unless I'm damn certain it's going to make an active Jitte or if it's to cast Teysa while leaving one Black source open for Rusalka. This is a judgment call on my part and you may not agree with me. I also cringed when Olivier's Bob killed him after revealing the O.G. Shinobi in the semi-finals. It hurts my butthole enough to Bob-reveal Ghost Council. The two cards in your hand aren't worth killing myself over, especially if my board position is strong yet my life points are dangling low.

I also like four Mortify, not three. It's the only creature kill you have, and I find nothing discomforting about gripping two or more of these at any point in the match. I also like three each Paladin and Grotesque, not two. Drawing any of these usually makes me happy.

About the bouncelands… I'm beginning to dislike them greatly. Four is too many. I don't care who you are. I am so sick of taking mulligans because the only two lands in my opening hands are Basilicas. It's almost as bad if you have, say, a Shrine and Basilica. You CANNOT wait until turn 3 to start playing Ravenous Rats, especially versus Zoo, Owling Mine, counter-heavy decks, and the aggro mirror. The Tournament Practice room is far from the Pro Tour. Here you will find cards like Stone Rain, Annex, and other assorted land-screwers. Having a Basilica destroyed or stolen in the early game is horrible news and is always a disheartening blow. I run two. If I draw it mid-game, then fine. If I don't, it's probably for the better. I will never pack more than two bounce-lands in any deck I run ever again, period. Bet your ass. Caldwell says so.

My Snootboard is my own creation, with exception to the Arenas, which I stole from the original. They are a great addition, and probably nothing I'd dream up on my own. Versus decks like Heartbeat and the mirror, they are the winning card. Normally if I bring in the Arenas, I also bring in the two Extractions, which I have no problem drawing thanks to the extra card per turn. Bob and Arena combined is a little hairy, and I've killed many a Confidant to keep from killing myself, but to let this run for a few turns will fill your hand so quickly that you'll be discarding at end-of-turn after casting all that you can. Don't try this versus Owl, obviously.

Plagued Rusalka was one card I was skeptical about. "What, are you that desperate for a one-drop? Why not Hounds or something?" Ten games later, I discovered that the card rocks balls. Prevent opposing Jittes from gaining counters, kill x/1s like Confidant and Lions, and make game-winning flyers with Teysa is some good. I find no reason to cast this turn 1 unless you're on the draw, have one or two more in your hand and you use it to chump something. It's usually not necessary and I can't think of one time where I actually did cast it turn 1.

I guess now is the time where I eat my own words regarding Teysa. I think the review I gave it was, "Yay, a girl on a Magic card, the kids will love this crap." My own words taste great, if a little stringy. How about, "Yay, a girl on a Magic card, she dodges Pyroclasm, she is wonderful Wrath tech, she safely blocks the 2/x creatures, and she makes flyers." Yeah, she shocked the crap out of me once I saw her full potential in action. I pack three. This is one of those rare occurrences where a character from the novels actually translated into a useful creature. I mean main characters, so don't go telling me how wrong I am because Godo and Yosei got a mention or two in the Kamigawa Trilogy, because we all know that Toshi, Hidetsugu, Kiku, and Hisoka were sub-standard cards for Constructed, and Kami of the Crescent Moon was a fluke. I don't even think Wizards saw that one coming. And as far as the characters from the Ravnica novels thus far, Agrus Kos, Savra, and Szadek suck. I've heard murmurs about Szadek being decent in decks of forty, but I've yet to see him deck anybody outside of casual. While the Ghost Council is talked about, they never get any serious coverage.

If I had room, I would try to fit in two or three Descendant of Kiyomaro, as your hand size is usually larger than your opponent's. I say usually, but there are still decks whizzing around where that won't be the case, so it falls under the "too situational for my tastes" category. Olivier packed one in the sideboard, and I personally detest the "bah, stick one somewhere" strategy.

Hopefully I've shed some light on a really efficient Pro Tour deck. Build it, try it out, and tell me what you think.

This is Ned Flanders signing out and reminding you to lay off the dope.

Ned Flan Der Snoot