States has come and gone, and seemed to serve important notice on the state of the current Standard environment - Tier 1 is harder to classify than ever, with a staggering variety of decks being played to top place finishes over this past weekend.

One thing, however, which has caught my attention, is the apparent coming of age of AstroGlide. I have always been a fan of the underdog, and this weekend AstroGlide proved that it could stand toe-to-toe with the big boys and come out on top. Expect to see it turning up in greater numbers in coming months.

And that brings us to today's article. Following the last one I posted on AstroGlide I received numerous e-mails detailing an updated version utilising Burning Wish as a way to deal with control and Wake out of the board. Others suggested further cards that would benefit from the cycling mechanic (Spirit Cairn, et al) and still others suggested that splashing an additional color might be of benefit. I will thus take up where I left off in the last article and delve into these issues, also taking into account the decklists provided from the various States events that occurred this weekend.

Chop 'N Change - What Makes The Cut?
Playtesting has shown that the Starstorms are somewhat expensive, given their cycling cost of three. I would therefore recommend running no more than two maindeck and would go so far as to venture dropping that down to one.

A good replacement for these would be one or two Aura Extractions. Following the strong showings this weekend of decks fuelled by enchantments and/or artifacts (AstroGlide, Wake, Opposition), the Aura Extractions will give you a maindeck way to hold off an opposing deck for a turn or two and also a way to preserve your own enchantments should anyone be running maindeck enchantment hate.

Another question is whether to run Akroma's Blessing, given the low creature count in the deck. The current argument for including them is the single white cycling cost, which enables the deck to begin cycling earlier than it could with a hand full of Starstorms, Solar Blasts and Slice and Dices. I personally am not convinced that the cycling cost makes up for the lack of utility... But it is a consideration nonetheless.

Also, I have found the Pardic Arsonists sitting idle in my hand far too often. The Arsonist works well in combination with the Slide... But until you have achieved threshold, he is simply a dead card in your hand that might be better replaced with something else. I would therefore recommend running no more than one copy or even dropping him from the main deck altogether (especially if the Living Wish version of the deck is being run, as detailed below).

Lastly, I would like to suggest a replacement for Exalted Angel - one that I noticed being run by a few decks this weekend - namely, Fledgling Dragon. The Dragon's cost is one more than an unmorphed Angel - but in a deck that achieves threshold as rapidly as AstroGlide does, it tends to provide a quicker kill (and also laughs at opposing Angels in the mirror).

Wish Upon A Star:
As mentioned, a number of respondents have also recommended the addition of Burning Wishes to the main deck - a suggestion which has served to improve the deck's chances against Wake and other enchantment/artifact-reliant decks in the first game and also enables it to find more dedicated creature kill when needed. The Wish allows the AstroGlide player to fetch the fourth Wrath of God, Pyroclasms, Morningtides, Pillages and Cleansing Meditations. The Meditations have proven to be useful against both Wake decks as well as the AstroGlide mirror, as the deck reaches threshold fairly rapidly.

Also, the consensus, more for European Wake than for Kibler Wake (because of the Rampant Growths in the latter), seems to be that the best way to handle the Wake matchup is to disrupt its mana base early on. In addition, the current incarnation of the deck runs only two Miraris with no means to retrieve them should they be countered, destroyed, or otherwise dealt with. The Pillages assist in both these regards, stalling the Wake early on or giving you another threat to their engine should the Mirari hit play.

An AstroGlide Burning Wish variant took the Maine State Championships this weekend.

Expanding The Mix: A Third Color?
The most frequent question posed in the feedback last week was: Why has no space been made for what many regard as the best cycling card in the set - Krosan Tusker? My initial response was that Tusker was too expensive to be used in the early game, when you generally want to survive through a combination of creature kill and life-gaining, and once control has been achieved to ride the Rifts/Angels/Dragons to victory. Also, adding a further color to the land base might prove problematic, given the eight cycling lands already seeing play.

What the addition does allow you to do, however, is add a green"187"-style creature that combines well with Astral Slide: Cartographer. With a Slide in play and a cycling land in hand, this equates to an additional card each turn.

Alex Player ran a G/R/W version of the deck to a 1st place finish at the West VA States. I am still a little uncertain about the mana-base on his deck, given the twelve cycling lands. Slow starts due to draws of too many cycling lands in the R/W version were always a problem - and that would seem to be exacerbated here. The Tusker might help you search for the basic lands you need, but he can still only be cycled on Turn 3... And turns 2 and 3 are generally when you want to be playing Lightning Rift and Astral Glide, respectively. Being hampered by slow mana is likely to give an opposing G/U or Sligh player an advantage you won't be able to recover from.

Still, the addition of sac lands and/or pain lands might alleviate this problem.

Another interesting approach was applied by Jacky Zhang, who played a Living Wish version of the deck, which allowed him to turn to his sideboard for"187" creatures to be utilised as silver bullets. This allowed him a similar approach to the Burning Wish deck, except for one difference: The Burning Wish approach is usually a once-off solution given the sorcery nature of the response, whereas the creature approach grants greater durability should one manage to get them working in tandem with the Slide. A notable absence from both the sideboard and the main deck are the Teroh's Faithfuls. The Faithfuls form an integral part of the deck's early strategy to fend off G/U, Sligh and other aggro builds, serving as both life-gaining and a blocker if need be - exclude them at your peril.

Should you decide to run the Living Wish variant of AstroGlide, remember two things: Firstly, the R/W version has a more consistent mana-base - and secondly, you lose access to the land-destruction sideboard response to Wake which the Burning Wish version has.

Also, I would be wary about the number of non-cycling additions made with either approach, as upping the number of non-cycling cards increases the risk of running into hands with dead cards that cannot be cycled to fuel the enchantments.

Is Black An Option?
A further splash raised is that of Undead Gladiator. The Gladiator provides a consistent cycling outlet in much the same way as the Cartographer, essentially granting every card in hand cycling. Unfortunately, given the current lack of non-allied pain lands with the rotation of Invasion block, I doubt the mana base would be able to adapt all that well to the addition.

The black cycling cards are fairly solid on the whole, however, and it would be interesting to see if a variant of the deck could be developed based around Undead Gladiator, Swat, Death Pulse, and Fade from Memory.

Spirit Cairn?
This has been suggested as a possible sideboard card against Control. Since cycling counts as discarding a card from your hand, Spirit Cairn gives you an uncounterable way to generate threats, should it hit play. It also allows you to chump-block Wurm tokens until such time as you draw into a Slide.

Unfortunately, while the card does provide another threat for the control player to deal with, it does not really fit into either of the Wish sideboards and is unlikely to see play in the main deck given the quantity of mass creature-removal present.

Conclusion:
All told, even though the core of the deck seems to be settled, there would seem to be a great deal of tailoring available to suit individual tastes.

I would like to hear from anyone who played the deck at States this weekend - how the matchups handled, what elements worked and didn't, and so on.

Lastly, thank you to: Andy Stevens, Charles Driver, Sebastian Herbstreuth, Bryan, Robert Bonner, Kevin Vaughan, Mark Matson, Patrick Tommasi, Amos, Toumas Vanhaven, and Allen Kelly for their responses and input following the last article.

Ryan Kruger
The Scrub
Lothric@mail.com