'Lo, all...

It's been a while, hasn't it?

*crickets chirping*

Okay, you probably didn't notice or remember the last time I wrote, but seeing as how State Championships are a little less than a month away, and the Odyssey Block Constructed format had all the appeal of Cathryn Mannheim in a wet T-shirt contest to yours truly, I figured I would wait until I really had something to say that would be remotely useful.

You might still be waiting after this article. All's a simple man can do is try.

Whatever it counts for (and that's probably not much), I've had a lot of success at State Championships the last several years, although I have yet to pull in that plaque... And, of course, who needs a Pro Tour or Grand Prix victory, several thousand dollars and the respect of your peers when you can have a plaque? In any case, a lot of people are going to beat you over the head with obvious generalizations:

1) Play a good deck.
2) Play a deck you're comfortable with.
3) Unless you're playing U/G Madness, you might as well not even be sitting there because you will get your face caved in like Faces of Death Volume Four.

And so on and so forth.

Do you really need one more person telling you that? Didn't think so... Although I guess I just did anyways.

Instead, I figured I'd start this little overview of what you can expect with a couple tips I've found to have been more useful over the last few years. Possibly redundant, but it's worked for me.

1A) Find the fastest beatdown deck in the format that is the least expensive to build.
Okay, this one is fairly easy... The two quickest decks in the format that are the cheapest to build would have to be Deep Dog and Piledriver Sligh. It also helps that Deep Dog is a carryover from the previous Block Constructed season, and while there are a couple of new cards that may or may not see play in it from Onslaught, the core of the deck will only vary three to four cards at the most. As for Piledriver Sligh, when a lot of people are in doubt, they will play small red men and burn spells, and just pray. I'm still not completely sold on how good the deck is itself, but no one ever admits that Sligh may be good, especially when it's powered-up by Goblins.

Regardless of whether or not it's capable of posting a winning record, it's irrelevant because somewhere, people will play it - and if you don't want to openly admit the deck may be decent, you sure as hell don't want to lose to it.

1B) Design a deck to smash the mortal hell out of said deck.
There's nothing wrong with going with said deck, but a lot of players (including myself) would rather find the deck that smashes it and breaks even with everything else than slog through more mirrors than R. Kelly's bedroom...

Not that I would know.

Okay, I admit, I was young and vulnerable, and he said there was candy in the back of the van.

Let's take the deck I played last year to a 6-1-2 Top Four finish (10-1 in games during the Swiss portion). You might remember this little ditty as...

Hot Garbage by Carl Jarrell
4 Birds of Paradise
2 Llanowar Elves
4 Kavu Titan
4 Call of the Herd
4 Ebony Treefolk
4 Flametongue Kavu
4 Spiritmonger
2 Shivan Wurm
4 Pernicious Deed
4 Urza's Rage
8 Forest
4 Swamp
4 Llanowar Wastes
4 Sulfurous Springs
2 Karplusan Forest
2 Darigaaz's Caldera

Sideboard:
4 Duress
4 Slay
4 Terminate
3 Hull Breach

*gives you a brief moment to make some Terminator jokes*

In all seriousness though, the deck was exactly what I needed to get into the Top Eight; I expected a field chock-full of R/G beats, and I was not disappointed. In more established formats, no way would I play things like two Shivan Wurms main or four Titans over Wild Mongrel (plus Mongrel, while good then, wasn't nearly as insane as he is now with Madness cards being thrown about). This was the field to play things like Ebony Treefolk, though, which trumped the two most-hyped cards going into the weekend (Call of the Herd and Shadowmage Infiltrator). Four copies of Pernicious Deeds were also vital, as naturally it's a great card in general - but it leads into the next point...

2A) Play at least three copies of a card that says, "I Will Not Die To Randomness."
You must have something in your maindeck - or at the very least, several copies in the sideboard, that has written in bold text on it, "I will not lose to Ensnaring Bridge. I will not lose to Meekstone. I will not lose to Ancestral Tribute/Test of Endurance. I will not lose to the guy who plays three of every COP in the board."

Playing good cards and good decks in general will give you more of a comfort level here, of course... But everyone has their horror stories, and I'm sure if you don't have one yourself, you know someone that does. You can't possibly hope to deal with everything, and there's definitely not a card in the format that mimicks Deed properly (there's Upheaval, but that's a different sort of reset entirely), but whatever your answer is to a specific problem should be good against a large variety of problems that may surface.

The big card that jumps out at me this go-around as the defining "I Will Not Lose To Randomness" card would have to be Naturalize - and, to a lesser extent, Ray of Revelation. I'm sure you've come to realize that a green Disenchant is Good Times, so I won't waste much more time on that one. The bottom line here is that, no, utility doesn't win games; speed and power do. Utility, however, keeps you from automatically losing games that you might've been able to avoid doing so otherwise.

Have I used up my parentheses quota yet? Just checking.

2B) All the playtesting in the world will not make a lick of difference if you don't make it through at least the first two rounds unscathed.
This ties in with the "I Will Not Lose To Randomness" theory - because unless you're fairly unlucky, from my experience, you will not see fairly competent players playing decks you've prepared for until at least the third round, if not beyond that. You cannot be content with your deck being merely "good" against non-mainstream stuff that's been thrown together; your deck should be a finely tuned skullcrushing machine, and you should be able to absolutely apesmash lesser decks, not just beat them. There should be no doubt involved here; if it's not something in your gauntlet and there are suspect cards being played, there should be a crater where your opponent was sitting ten minutes ago, PERIOD.

I'll give you an example: During 1999 States it was the second round, and I was unfortunately 0-1 (however, that has been the last match I've lost in the Swiss in three years, so insert smiley face here, yawn, etc. etc.), and I get paired up against a guy with a relatively obese-looking deck that wasn't sleeved.

Don't get overconfident here. If you deserve to be there, then your deck will do everything for you.

So around my fourth turn (I'm playing Control Black similar to Mike Flores' Napster build), I cast a Ticking Gnomes and pass the turn. My opponent then proceeds to Builder's Bane it on his turn, and I break out the best technology ever: I call for a judge.

Seeing as how that entire block had just rotated out, he was given a game loss, but still allowed to play the second game, because despite having well over thirty cards removed from his deck, HE STILL WAS AT 60+.

I'm digressing though. When his deck was legalized, I promptly went Swamp, Ritual, Skittering Horror, second turn Rishadan Port your land, third turn drop second Port and Duress you, fourth turn beat with the Horror yet again with double-Port action going. I'm probably biased (not to mention insanely lucky) because it was me doling out the punishment, but that's got to be one of the smallest chances I've ever seen anyone give anybody else to even compete in a game, much less win.

The first two rounds are critical; Smash or smash not, or whatever that little green Muppet that lives in the swamp used to say. Don't let R&D tell you otherwise. When it comes to tournament play, non-interaction is swell; your deck should be able to just go absolutely nuts on people if they stumble or play bad cards - and this is where it counts, getting past the first few rounds of randomness so you can start facing the matchups and cards you spent a lot of hours prepping for.

3) If you play Said Popular Deck, you MUST know the mirror inside and out, or you will die a violent death.
This is the least attractive option to many people, and requires the most work... Yet it can be the most fun and rewarding, and have the biggest payoff, especially when there's a new set rotating in and you can take advantage of players not knowing the power of the newer cards in certain matchups.

Let's say you've sold your soul down by the crossroads and have decided to go with Deep Dog. How do you go about beating the mirror? Aether Bursts would help... But you'd be slightly insane not to run those maindeck anyways. A lot of the creatures in the deck have four power or greater, especially when people get greedy with Wild Mongrel... Do you splash white for sideboard Reprisal and/or Intrepid Hero at the expense of making your own Wonders significantly worse, if not playable at all? Do you play Glory instead if you do - and is that better or worse overall? Do you play Gigapedes, Silklash Spider, or Phantom Centaurs in the main?

And what about the sideboard specifics? Do you have a pissing war over Wonder with Krosan Reclamation, or do you rope-a-dope them if they get to their Wonder first and Moment's Peace them right out of the game?

There can be no middle ground here; if you know why your deck wins, you must understand why it loses, because that's where you will be attacked - and if you're not ready for that, you will not break through the clone army.

4) If you decide to go rogue, your deck better have nothing but broken cards in it.
There's no walking the fine line, either; your rogue deck may be cute or able to pull off neat tricks, but there should not be as much as one even remotely questionable card in the deck unless for some reason that card is good against the field on that particular occasion.

Take my States deck from last year, again... Never mind the fact that that deck had been brewing ever since the first hours of the Odyssey spoiler leaking (truly successful rogue decks take a lot of time to make work, and if you don't have that time available, I wouldn't recommend it), sure, as far as I know that's the only time Ebony Treefolk had ever been played in a deck that was successful at all... But what it did do, it did very well (blocking and killing Johnny Magic as well as eating Call tokens for breakfast), while still being efficient as a 3/3 for 3 mana.

Every last card should be efficient by itself if it's in your deck - but you knew this already, hopefully. Oh, and test. And test some more. And when you're done with that, test some more. You might want to invest in bulk supplies of caffeine pills or develop insomnia... That's how I rock things on my end.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, I'll end this first installment with sample decklists of the four decks you absolutely must be prepared against; if your deck doesn't go at least 50% against at least two of these decks, don't go chasing false hope down a rabbithole; move on for your sake.

One final thing to remember is that there really hasn't been a right way nor a wrong way to build these decks established yet, and as such they may not be the optimized versions... That's for you to discover on your own. Remember, these are generalizations of what you can expect the majority of people to play when playing said decks - and once you understand the basics, you can then go more in-depth as to whether or not the decks can be improved, and if so, how. These are simply the measuring sticks in the meantime; if you disagree, feel free to improve upon them as you will.

Control Black
4 Duress
3 Innocent Blood
3 Smother
4 Chainer's Edict
4 Mutilate
4 Diabolic Tutor
4 Tainted Pact
1 Skeletal Scrying
1 Disrupting Scepter
1 Haunting Echoes
1 Mirari
1 Riptide Replicator
3 Corrupt
23 Swamp
3 Cabal Coffers

SB:
4 Braids, Cabal Minion
4 Mesmeric Fiend
4 Engineered Plague
1 Tainted Aether (anti-Bearscape technology; but again, this is a sample decklist)
2 Millstone

Deep Dog
4 Careful Study
4 Basking Rootwalla
4 Wild Mongrel
4 Merfolk Looter
4 Arrogant Wurm
4 Roar of the Wurm
4 Circular Logic
4 Aether Burst
3 Wonder
3 Deep Analysis
10 Forest
9 Island
3 City of Brass

Sideboard:
3 Envelop
3 Compost
4 Naturalize
1 Krosan Reclamation
2 Bearscape
2 Moment's Peace

Piledriver Sligh
4 Raging Goblin
4 Goblin Sledder
4 Goblin Taskmaster
4 Grim Lavamancer
4 Goblin Piledriver
4 Sparksmith
4 Reckless Charge
4 Firebolt
4 Shock
4 Lava Dart
10 Mountain
2 Barbarian Ring
4 Wooded Foothills
4 Bloodstained Mire

Sideboard:
4 Fledgling Dragon
2 Flaring Pain
4 Threaten
1 Goblin Sharpshooter
4 Pillage

UZI
4 Force Spike
4 Counterspell
4 Circular Logic
4 Memory Lapse
3 Aether Burst
3 Smother
3 Cunning Wish
4 Trade Secrets
3 Upheaval
3 Zombie Infestation
4 Underground River
4 Polluted Delta
12 Island
3 Swamp
2 Darkwater Catacombs

Sideboard:
1 Aether Burst
1 Smother
1 Divert
1 Opportunity
2 Mana Short
2 Hibernation
4 Duress
3 Engineered Plague

Get to digging into those sample decklists - and next go-around, I'll throw out some rogue decklists, the playtesting process that went into them, and whether or not they're complete and total wastes of time or possibly viable, as well as a further look into what Onslaught cards people are really going to play.

All I'll say is - and I never thought I'd say this in a million years - but why the hell does Sterling Grove have to rotate out now?

Also, I'll try not to sound as pretentious and all-knowing next time. If you want funny like my Regionals report, well, wait until my States report. *grin*

May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house,

Carl J.
carl_jarrell@hotmail.com
Zeke2517 on mIRC
The King of Greyhounds