"What the hell is that?"

"Soldiers."

"Are you running that tomorrow?"

"Yeah."

"Oh my God! Soldiers are crap; that deck has no right being played at Regionals."

"It's good."

"No it's not! You're gonna go like 1-6 drop or something."
"Okay."

Yes, soldiers. I've noticed a few minor articles here and there, none of which were major proponents of the deck. Well here, let me say it: I love soldiers. The decklist below is the result of six months of testing and tweaking to create a viable deck. I've played this deck every week since December at Friday Night Magic, to the exception of anything else. My usual result at our local tourneys with it is 3-1, with the exception of a few embarrassing 2-2's. The night before Regionals, I went 3-1 and got 5^th place out of a thirty-something person tourney.

Without further ado, here's the list that I ran at Saturday's Northern California Regionals:

Soldiers!
4x Deftblade Elite
3x Gustcloak Runner
4x Catapult Squad
4x Whipcorder
2x Longbow Archer
2x Intrepid Hero
2x Commander Eesha
3x Exalted Angel
4x Shared Triumph
2x Glorious Anthem
4x Mobilization
2x Disenchant
4x Daru Encampment
20x Plains

Sideboard:
4x Demystify
2x Disenchant
3x Worship
3x Circle of Protection: Black
3x Reprisal

Now, I'm sure most of you are looking at this, saying,"How in God's name could this ever win?" Well, it does - and a lot more frequently than it loses. It has obscenely favorable matchups against U/G and R/G - which, incidentally, make up the vast majority of the current field and an even greater portion of the environment at Regionals.

This is, at its heart, an aggro deck, similar in many respects to White Weenie. However, there are many areas where it completely departs in functionality from any deck out there. It is capable of early-game pressure and board control, large amounts of midgame fatness, and an overwhelming late game. However, none of these factors is what really makes it win.

The reason it works is this: Huge and huge amounts of combat tricks. A first-turn Deftblade Elite followed by a Daru Encampment or Shared Triumph can completely lock down your opponent's early plays. It either forces them to hold all their 1/1 guys in their hand until they can remove your offending one-drop, or they'll be stupid and have all their early Grim Lavamancers, Merfolk Looters, Basking Rootwallas, and Birds of Paradise get popped before they can even activate them.

Whipcorder, Intrepid Hero, and Catapult Squad act as more creature control, effectively shutting down or at least severely weakening your opponent's board position. Think about it: What good does a 6/6 flyer do if it can never attack? My point exactly.

Against control decks, especially monoblack, Mobilization provides you the ammo to sway the late game in your favor. I have been in numerous situations where I was able to churn out four Hill Giants a turn. Trust me, nothing can race that. Many people would argue that four Mobilizations is too much - but considering the fact that every deck out there has countermagic, enchantment hate, or hand disruption, coupled with the fact that it is a large part of the win condition mid- to late-game, I've found three isn't enough. Making none of your creatures tap to attack can swing the game against other aggressive decks, and allows you to easily win the damage race.

Now, before you continue, I'll remind you that I only went to Regionals with the intention of getting some games in, enjoying myself, and hopefully breaking even. The looks of confusion on my opponents' faces and the fact that they had to stop and read every card I played was immensely satisfying.

Round 1 vs. Wizards
My opponent, Adam, was the nicest guy I played the entire day. If you're reading this, props for playing wizards!

Game One I draw two plains, Daru Encampment, Deftblade Elite, Catapult Squad, Whipcorder, and Longbow Archer. He drops a few early wizards. I empty my hand, topdeck into a Shared Triumph, and deal twenty damage over the course of three turns. Ouch.

I sideboarded in Worship, seeing as blue really doesn't have a way to deal with it unless they run Chain of Vapor or Boomerang, of which I saw none.

Game Two: I keep an opening hand with two Mobies, a Worship, two lands, and some critters. Things are going okay until he gets a Patron Wizard out. I have no Deftblade, let alone pump, so the thing stays on the board, making it nearly impossible to resolve anything. I get stuck at three lands and he deals me huge amounts of one-toughness blue beatdown. The creatures I do manage to resolve, he Unsummons.

Game Three: This one keeps about even till midgame, where I am able to force through an Exalted Angel by baiting out his Counterspell ammo with a Mobilization. Next turn, I force through another Angel. He dies in two turns.

Match Record: 1-0 Games: 2-1

Round 2 vs. R/G Beats
Game One: I draw a hand containing two Deftblades, a Runner, a plains, a Shared Triumph, a Moby, and an Angel. Perfect hand - assuming I draw into at least one or two lands in a few turns. After thinking it over, I decide to keep. I go plains, Deftblade, go. He goes mountain, Firebolt it, go. Next draw is not a land.

I play another Deftblade. He plays a Wild Mongrel. Draw. Not a land.

Play the Runner. He plays a mountain, swings with the Mongrel, and Violent Eruptions my creatures off the board. Next card is not a land. He goes Call of the Herd, Rootwalla, Lavamancer. Next card is still not a land. Next turn, he Elephant Guides his Wild Mongrel. I die in two turns without ever drawing a land.

After the game, I look and I don't have any plains for ten turns. I really need to learn how to shuffle better. (And to know when to mulligan - The Ferrett, noting that anyone who keeps a one-land hand in the first hand is gambling far too much)

Game Two: I get a Godly opening, swinging for lethal damage by my seventh turn. He just rolls over and dies. I don't remember the details, but I do know there was an Exalted Angel in there somewhere. Some good.

Game Three: I didn't see any Naturalizes in game one or two, so I board in my three Worships. My opening hand is keep-worthy. However, I am stuck at three lands the entire game, and the Worship never hits the board. In a twenty-four land deck, this kind of thing should really not be happening. I was sitting there staring down my Glorious Anthem on the board with a Commander Eesha in my hand... Which, by the way, with the Worship, would have allowed me to pull this game out. However, he drew obscene amounts of goodness and trounced me.

1-1, 3-3.

Round 3 vs. Graveborn Identity
Interestingly enough, I was paired against (and beat) this same guy playing the same deck last at the Friday Night Magic tournament at my local store. A rather large group from Nevada came and played at our store that night, as Nevada has no Regionals. A very cool guy.

Game One: I managed to trounce all over him. He Mutilated mid-game and took out his side of the board as well as mine to try to reset the board. I resolved a Moby and was cranking out three Hill Giants a turn thanks to two Shared Triumphs. Mobilization is some good.

Game Two: I board in three Circle of Protection: Blacks. He gets a pretty good start, first-turn Duressing the only Circle of Protection: Black I saw that game, but my turn 3 face-down Angel didn't get Smothered and I flipped it the next turn. I hit him twice with it, forcing him to remove it with a Corrupt. I get a Moby out. He throws two Corrupts at me over the course of the next few turns, bringing me down to seven, which is well within range of death from the last Corrupt that I knew he was running.

I had the board locked down with Mobilization and Catapult Squad, so that there was no way he was getting any attacking creatures through. By late game, I was churning out Hill Giants again, and despite his multiple Rotlung Reanimators, I was able to out-do him in the creature race due to Mobilization's godly Serrafication ability and the nine beautiful lands staring me down from my side of the board. I do a couple of mad tech plays with Catapult Squad and remove all his creatures. He scoops.

2-1, 5-3

Round 4 vs. R/G
Game One: I draw a good hand. He gets manascrewed. I feel really bad doing it, but I swing for lethal damage by about turn 5 or 6.

Game Two: I get ahead of him in the early creature race and manage to knock off a Lavamancer with The Best Card In Legions (1337!) before he Firebolts it. He gets a Wild Mongrel, two Rootwallas, and a Lavamancer on the board. I get a few soldiers and two Angels, one of which was hard-cast. At this point, he drops an Ensnaring Bridge, realizing there's no way he's gonna win the creature race. He starts burning me down from twenty, and I just sit there waiting for one of my four post-sideboard Disenchants. Four turns later, I draw into the Disenchant, pop the Bridge, and swing for lethal damage.

3-1, 5-3

Round 4 vs. U/G
Game One: I go first. Runner, go. Island, Careful Study, discard island and Roar, go. Squad, go. Mongrel, Go. Resolve an Intrepid Hero, go. A turn or so after that, he swung with a Mongrel, then discarded a Wonder and madnessed a Wurm into play off it.

Pop! There goes his madness outlet. I pop all the fat he plays, don't see the maindeck Unsummons, and beat him senseless.

Game Two: He just rolls over and dies. Reprisal is some good.

4-1, 7-3

Round 5 vs. U/G
Game One: I beat him into a bloody paste thanks to the absolute goodness of a couple of Whipcorders, a Catapult Squad, a Commander Eesha, and a resolved Moby. Ouch.

Game Two: I keep the two Disenchant slots as Demystifies because I am deathly afraid of Equilibrium and/or Worship. (I saw a City of Brass game one and I wanted to be totally sure, because I've seen a lot of U/G running the Worship variant lately, and I wanted to make sure I didn't auto-lose a game I was winning.) My opening hand consists of one of the aforesaid Demystifies - but other than that, it's okay. I keep it. Immediately, I draw the other one. Ouch.

He gets an explosive start and manages to Circular Logic or bounce everything I play and I'm stuck staring down a hand of two stupid Demystifies while he's swinging for ten a turn with two Wurms and a Mongrel. I die. Ouch.

Game Three: This was the most stressful, perfectly-played, mad-tech game of my life. It's all kind of a big messy blur, because I was so viciously high on adrenaline that I don't remember the details. Remember, I didn't go to this tourney with the intent of writing a tourney report, let alone remembering most of the turn-by-turn plays.

It basically went like this: Early game was even. Mid-game consisted of him churning out three Roar of the Wurms from a Quiet Speculation. I do all I can to fight back, and manage to keep things kind of even, but he gets a Wonder and counters the Reprisal that I throw at the first Roar. About midgame, I look at the board and realize that I die next turn. Then I topdeck an Exalted Angel. Then another one. Both of which resolve. I have an active Moby at this point and a Catapult Squad; the turn I play the first Angel, he swings with one of his two current roars. I chump block it to buy myself two more turns on the clock.

Second Angel hits the board. I topdeck into a Reprisal. He Ray of Revelations my Moby and swings with everything, realizing he has quite a bit more than lethal damage. However, I manage to Reprisal one of his roars, block the other with my Angel, and then use some mad Catapult Squad tricks (timing things between his pump going on the stack and whatnot) which allow me to take one point less than lethal damage. He's at fifteen due solely to self-inflicted painland damage... I look down and realize that with Encampments I have exactly fifteen damage next turn. He has no cards in hand. Good game.

All my friends were standing around me watching this one, and I can say it was truly the most stressful game of my life - but over the course of it, I cannot recall making a single play error. I can honestly say the only reason I was able to win this was because of the disgusting amounts of experience I have playing this deck to the exclusion of all else. I love my deck.

5-1, 9-3

Round 7 vs. U/G/r Threshold.
Game One: I cheer inwardly when I see the first-turn island, Careful Study. I then become confused when he discards a Roar... And a mountain. He manages to achieve threshold by turn 3 thanks to Tolarian Winds, which I hadn't seen since Tolarian Academy decks died back before Legacy came out. He informed me that they were in 7^th, which immediately made me wonder why people weren't using them. His deck was far faster and more efficient than any of the U/G madness decks I ran into that day. However, he didn't have any countermagic. (That's why - The Ferrett) This allowed me to resolve a turn 3 Intrepid Hero, turn 4 Commander Eesha and a turn 6 Exalted Angel... Which means I win. Threshold really sucks when I can pop 80% of the creatures on your side of the board. He dies.

Game Two: The Reprisals come in. I keep the Disenchant slot filled with Demystify because I am still deathly afraid of equilibrium. My opening hand has one of them, and my next draw is the other. This is the second time all day this has happened.

He gets an early Wonder in the yard and Quiet Specs for the Roars. My Eesha gets Unsummoned and he swings for lethal damage. I need to stop keeping enchantment hate in against U/G; I'm still angry at the guy at our local store who instilled aforesaid deathly fear into me by running those. It's an insta-lose against my best matchup, so...

Anyway. Yeah, game two was painful.

Game Three: God, Reprisal is so good. All I remember about this one was that I provoked out his Rootwalla and Werebear with my 2/2 Deftblade (thanks to an Encampment on the second turn) and then proceeded to own all over him. Not having countermagic must really suck.

6-1, 10-4

I'm 6-1. I'm at the top table in the whole 502-person tournament. With Soldiers. The guy who said,"You're gonna 1-6-drop" guy came up to me at this point and said,"So I hear you're 6-1. Congrats," and promptly walked off. Only two other people from the store are 6-1; my friend Jim playing Tog and... An Aqualube deck. (It was at this point where I pointed out the $50 our good friend The Ferrett is offering. A shame he didn't top 8.)

Anyway. Jim is the best player I know and his game with Tog is pretty much flawless. He's a few seats up from me at the top table. At one point during the 8^th round, the guy next to him looked at my game, looked at him and said,"What the hell is Gustcloak Runner doing at the top table?" Jim then proceeded to explain that I had made the deck myself and had four months of solid experience playing it against pretty much every deck in the field, and I knew it inside and out and it had very good matchups against anything with green in it...

To which his neighbor replied"No, I'm serious. What the hell is Gustcloak Runner doing at the top table?"

Round 8 vs. U/G
Game One: We sit down, shuffle, cut, and draw our hands. Mine is the most perfect hand I have drawn all day. Everyone else at our table is already a few turns into their game, but we took a little longer to shuffle. I had seen my opponent playing a round against someone else earlier while I was passing by, and knew he was running U/G. I was jumping with joy. Here I was, 6-1 facing my best matchup...

Then we got deck checked. We had to hand our decks in, spend fifteen minutes talking about the weather, re-shuffle, and start entirely over. This time, my hand was landless. I mulliganed. This hand had two lands, but was pretty suboptimal. I kept.

The game was going okay... Until he threw an Aether Burst at me, which is the one card U/G is capable of running that would make things hard for me. Midgame, he managed to Aether Burst my Eesha and my Whipcorder, then counter both of them next turn with two Logics. I manage to get some things back on to the board, and then he Aether Bursts against, returning all three of my creatures and swinging for twelve. I have six mana on the board and an Angel in my hand; I try and play it.

He Logics it. I lose.

Game Two: He draws all four Logics, two Turbulent Dreams, and two Aether Bursts by midgame. Against that, no amount of tech or plays could possibly swing the game for me.

Damn the man.

6-2, 10-6.

Shut up.

Round 9 vs. G/W beasts
Game One: I have the board entirely locked down and two Angels out when he Living Wishes for a Glory, gives all his men protection from white, and hits me for lethal damage in one turn.

Once again... Damn the man.

Game Two: I go to board in my Morningtides to realize that I took them out of my sideboard the night before at the suggestion of quite a few people. Thus, I had no answer to Glory. I had to play this game and just pray he never drew into one.

The game starts, things go well, I manage to deal quite a bit of damage to him and get the game pretty much in my favor...When he topdecks a Living Wish, Wishes for a Glory, discards it to a Mongrel, pro white, swing with everything, and discard his entire hand to the Mongrel for lethal damage.

6-3, 10-8.

My unstoppable ass-kicking spree has been stifled. I'm sad.

Round 10 vs. R/G
This round would decide whether I got me half a box of Legions.

Game One: I went first-turn plains, Deftblade Elite. He looked at it funny and then proceeded to play a Lavamancer. I played a Shared Triumph and killed it. He played a Rootwalla. I killed it.

Basically, I was able to beat him due to the fact that it was 1:30 a.m. and I was hyped-up on caffeine, while he was falling asleep and making play errors left and right.

Game Two: He tried for the"Ensnaring Bridge, burn you to death" plan; of course, I had my four Disenchants, but he didn't know that. Basically, I got two Angels and an Anthem on the board, waited till they both were over summoning sickness, popped the Bridge and swung for ten, holding another Disenchant in my hand. I showed it to him and he scooped.

7-3, 12-8

42^nd Place out of 502

I was told the night before I was going to go 1-4 drop, as you may recall. This is the best I've ever done in a Magic tournament in my entire life. Not only did I get in the top 10% of the largest Regionals that Northern California has ever seen, but I did it with a rogue deck entirely of my own devising that was the result of months and months of tweaking and playing and, most of all, losing. If there's one thing I've learned from this, it's this: Given the opportunity between playing the best deck in the format and the deck with which you are most experienced, it pays to go with what you're good with. Especially when your opponents have no idea what the right plays are against you because they've never seen your deck in their entire life.

I had the option of running U/G for Regionals, and I decided not to. I went to it with no intention of doing well, let alone breaking even. I went because it was a chance to play and enjoy myself - and God, you know, owning people using a self-created rogue deck is just so much fun. I really don't think I'm going to play anything else until Onslaught Block rotates out of Standard. You know why? Because its my deck, it's not on the internet anywhere (well, now it is), and dammit, I'm proud of it.

Oh, hey, um... Does anybody want a foil Lavaborn Muse? I pulled it from my half-box. I don't know what the hell I'm gonna do with it.

You know, it's a pretty good sideboard choice vs. Ensnaring Bridge.

Or something.

Props:

• Jim - Thanks for all the advice. You kick ass.
• Team Rabid Wombat - I love you guys.
• Wizard Deck Guy - Go crappy tribal rogue decks!
• Everyone from Sports Cards and Chocolate
• Wizards R&D - For whoever is responsible for Deftblade Elite

Jay Rubottom
Jaywinton@aol.com
Team Rabid Wombat