Keeping with tradition, Wizards of the Coast has once again brought us a creative, and powerful, third set to think about. I know that I will not be the only one turning over the cards in my mind, analyzing the standard metagame. Will Fires reign king? Will there be a new archetype of utter power and insanity, most likely involving a large Spiritmonger? Or will the metagame retain its rock/paper/scissors redundancy between U/W, Rebels, and Fires? Obviously, Apocalypse will make some sort of impact with its totally mocking opposition to the themes of the previous sets in the block — namely, allied-color strategies. But what cards can we really expect to impact Type II in July?

I, for one, believe that the most viable cards in the set will come from black. As for Spiritmonger, we all know that he has the most hype of any card in the set. However, if we look beyond the screaming rares of the set — including the 'Monger, Pernicious Deed, and Vindicate, mainly — a few diamonds in the rough shine out to me.

In the future, I can see the likelihood of post-Apocalyptic Type II being all about speed. Type II is currently extremely slow compared to the days of the Urza Block. And in my opinion, this transformation will come from one card: Phyrexian Arena. Under further examination, we can see that the arena is more than card advantage — it's card advantage every turn, at the cost of one measly life per turn. With double the resources of your opponent, you have twice as many options, and will advance twice as quickly. Perhaps one of the largest splashes for Type II since rebels will come in the form of this docile form of Necropotence. In my testing on Apprentice, I have found a few decks that seem to function relatively well with the Arena, both focusing on ideas, and using the arena to compound them.

The first, listed below, is a similar deck to the first Necropotence decks. It uses fast creatures and cheap enchantments for a fast win (what a thought!). But where the deck really shines is that it can use discard to slow the opponent, all the while draining their life faster than they lose it. This deck is fitfully-named Suicide Black, Type II:

S.B. T2:
4 Foul Imp
4 Maggot Carrier
4 Phyrexian Battleflies
4 Chimeric Idol
2 Sinister Strength
4 Unholy Strength
4 Phyrexian Arena
4 Unmask
4 Duress
4 Dark Ritual
4 Suppress
18 Swamp

As you can see, a turn one Dark Ritual yields you a Foul Imp, with Duress and Unmask as a possibility, or Unholy Strength. In the case of the latter, you could Sinister Strength on turn two for seven damage! The deck works incredibly fast, whittling away at their life, using Suppress to hold them off for valuable turns. Sideboard ideas are being considered, and the deck is a work in progress. Regenerators are definitely a good sideboard idea. If you have any ideas about the deck, send them to mpd@ballistic.com.

The second deck uses a similar strategy as the above deck, but with a blue Skies-style variant. The idea is to stall their resources while optimizing your card advantage. Obviously, the ratio of card advantage goes strongly in your favor. The name of the deck is Dark Skies.

Dark Skies:
4 Troublesome Spirit
4 Rishadan Airship
4 Chimeric Idol
4 Gush
2 Desolation Angel
4 Wash Out
4 Foil
4 Phyrexian Arena
3 Suppress
3 Parallax Tide

This idea is very similar to the original Skies deck, and would perform in a similar manner because of the card advantage yielded by the Arena. Obviously, the player can forego the use of many counterspells, because with one Arena in play the Foils are now doubled — and with the use of Gush and the Arena, Foiling a spell is very viable. Also, while the creature count is probably lower than most standard Skies decks, the drawing of extra cards is extremely useful and effectively doubles the creature count. Also, by using Suppress and Parallax Tide once again, card advantage is perpetual, and their lack of offence becomes a lack of defense.

These are by no means the only viable decks to include the Arena — of course, there will be a Turbo-Monger or Turbo-Deed deck, but a B/W rebel deck is not impossible. Because of the large colorless mana costs in a rebel deck, it would not be too challenging to build a basic CounterRebel design, but using discard in lieu of counters and the Arena as offense. Every color combination is virtually possible, thanks to the addition of Apocalypse painlands.

If control can use the Arena, however, remains to be seen. Because of the loss of life, a control deck would have to be relatively fast to not die from the loss of life compounded by whatever life they lost during the beginning of the match. Perhaps a Megrim/Warped Devotion/bounce deck is viable, but it probably won't see much play.

The Arena, of course, is not the only breakable card in Apocalypse. While it may not be as powerful as any other card in the set, Wild Research over the last few days has become a sort of pet junk rare of mine. It remains to be seen whether it can combo well with anything. The deck revolving around it takes many of its cues from Nate Heiss's deck"Mafia King," which had fairly good results at Regionals, and revolved around the abuse of Enlightened and Vampiric Tutors for a very flexible deck. This first attempt is very much like his deck:

Wild Research:
4 Wild Research
4 Counterspell
4 Accumulated Knowledge
4 Foil
4 Prophetic Bolt
2 Story Circle
2 Teferi's Moat
2 Misdirection
1 Teferi's Response
2 Suffocating Blast
1 Confound
4 Nether Spirit
2 Wrath of God
8 Island
2 Coastal Tower
3 Adarkar Wastes
3 Shivan Reef
4 Plains
4 Mountains

This deck has some big holes, mostly concerning mana. So I tried a second variant, going B/U/R that focused mainly on recursion of creatures with the only two viable recursion sources:

4 Wild Research

4 Recoil

4 Terminate

4 Foil

2 Misdirection

4 Probe

1 Spiritmonger

1 Avatar of Woe

1 Blinding Angel

3 Reya, Dawnbringer

1 Volrath the Fallen

2 Strands of Night

2 Life/Death

3 Underground River

3 Sulfurous Springs

8 Islands

5 Swamps

5 Mountains

The only obvious problem here is that with no way to search for any Strands of Night, the only way to get them is to draw into them. All things considered, however, this version would probably be a little more consistent than the previous deck. Right now I am working on a version using a Pulse of Llanowar to smooth the mana. If you have any comments or suggestions, feel free to send them to mpd@ballistic.com

Are you ready for July? We have one whole month to analyze the metagame and to try and guess what the next insane deck will be. Until July, though, I will be at home, whistling while I work on my new pet deck"Wild Research?!?!?"

Good luck to all the other Magic junkies!

-Sean Dodd