All over the Internet, people have theorized about a Standard deck that would break Regionals in half. I think the first person to put it into words was Dan Paskins; in his first article, he said that you would do well at Regionals if your deck could beat both Affinity and Goblin Bidding.

Well, today I have a deck that not only beats those two decks - but also Paskins' Mono-Red deck itself. Before you get your hopes up, though, I would like to point out that the idea that the best decks are the ones that beat Ravager and Goblins is not simply not true; 6-5 at Regionals proved that for me.

Anyway here's Anti-Creature Affinity:

Anti-Creature Affinity
4 Glimmervoid
4 Great Furnace
4 Vault of Whispers
3 Ancient Den
2 Blinkmoth Nexus
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Frogmite
4 Myr Enforcer
4 Ornithopter
4 Disciple of the Vault
2 Arcbound Worker
4 Skullclamp
4 Welding Jar
3 Pyrite Spellbomb
4 Electrostatic Bolt
4 Shrapnel Blast
2 Shatter

Sideboard
4 Leonin Elder
1 Ancient Den
2 Shatter
4 Stabilizer
4 Pyroclasm

With four Bolts, four Shrapnel Blasts, and three Pyrite Spellbombs, the deck has a hard time losing to Goblins. Pyroclasm just makes matters worse for them. Goblin Bidding is only a problem if they have a graveyard with all the right men - including a Goblin Warchief, two black sources, and of course the necessary Patriarch's Bidding. Those requirements give you plenty of time to kill them with several swings and a final attack complete with an 8/10 Ornithopter.

Game one against Ravager is in your favor thanks to the main deck removal, and Leonin Elder is amazing against them in games two and three. If he sits around unanswered, then you will gain between ten and twenty life. If they do kill it, it draws their removal away from vital cards like Myr Enforcer and Disciple of the Vault. A late-game Elder actually reads,"1W: draw two cards" (with a Skullclamp on the board, of course).

At this point, you're probably wondering if my deck actually beats Goblins and Ravager. After all, I went 6-5, didn't I? There are a couple of reasons why I'm not qualified for Nationals, and they all have to do with playtesting. All of my group's deck decisions were based on the general feeling on the internet that anything that beats Goblins and Affinity wins. We wrote off decks like Tooth and Nail and Big Red because it seemed like no one would be playing them, and Ravager was supposedly fast enough to beat random decks anyway. We also decided that a bad matchup against Astral Slide - about 70% in their favor - was okay because no one would be playing the deck.

That was a mistake...

Round 1: Guy in a red shirt with hearing loss playing Bidding
You're going to have to bear with me about my opponents' names. Quite frankly, I didn't think anyone would care about the name of my opponents, so I didn't keep track. (And you would be correct - The Ferrett)

Game one: I had a typically good hand while he sat around on one red source. He then tapped wrong by using his one red source to activate Skullclamp so that he couldn't play the Goblin Piledriver he drew in the next two cards. I finished him before he could fire off his Bidding.

Game two, we were both sitting around doing nothing while I held two Pyroclasms and he held on to a bunch of lands. Midway through the match, someone pointed out that I had dropped an Ancient Den. My opponent pointed out that I had only played one Ancient Den, and got me a game loss due to presenting an illegal deck. The only answer I can think of is that it fell out after I pile shuffled.

Oh well; on to game three.

My hand was awesome; his was sub-par. I had Pyroclasm; he had no artifact hate. I had Ravager, Disciple, and Myr Enforcer; he had two Goblin Warchiefs, which were brought down by Pyroclasm. Despite the game loss, I pulled out the win 2-1.

1-0, 2-1

Round 2: John playing a G/R Anti-Affinity that beat one of Seattle's premiere players with a Leonin Bladetrap in Round 1
With Leonin Bladetrap! No joke.

Game one, he forgot to regenerate his Troll Ascetics after a Pyroclasm, and I was holding a Bolt to finish off his lonely Molder Slug, who had just blocked a Myr Enforcer.

Game two: He played Blood Moon, got mana screwed, and lost.

2-0, 4-1

Round 3: Andrew Girardeau-Dale, playing Tooth and Nail.
I know Andrew, so I remembered his name, but if he was honest, he would also reply to"lucky topdecker."

Game one: He pulled an Urza's Tower off the top to cast a turn 5 Tooth and Nail for Duplicant and Darksteel Colossus. The Duplicant tried to steal my Myr Enforcer, which I sacked to my Ravager. After taking eleven from Colossus, he cast a second Tooth and Nail for Leonin Abunas and Platinum Angel. After drawing my card and making sure he actually attacked me, I scooped.

Game 2: He drew his second green source off the top on turn 5, then cast Tooth and Nail for Colossus and Platinum Angel. I died two turns later.

I drew bad hands, but the match demonstrated a severe hole in my group's playtesting: After losing to Andrew (who, as it turned out, would've qualified if he hadn't lost to Bidding in the last round), I knew we had seriously overlooked Tooth and Nail during testing. Oh well.

2-1, 4-3.

Round 4: Pat playing RUB Affinity
I had played Pat once before at the Darksteel pre-release. At that time, she had been playing Magic for about a month.

When she sat down, I thought I would be in for an easy match. Apparently, she had improved since our last meeting; she had a Ravager deck. Despite Aether Vial (which I consider very weak unless you're mana screwed), and Myr Retriever in the board, her deck seemed all right.

Game one: I drew three Disciple of the Vaults off of Skullclamp, combined with Ravager and some small creatures. I won that game.

Game two: I sent away a hand with my only land being one Vault of Whispers, which didn't quite fit with three red spells. My second hand had no lands, as did my third. However I was drawing, and my Ravager, Disciple, Welding Jar, Ornithopter, and Frogmite seemed better than taking my chances with four cards. She was stuck at one land, and I didn't draw a land until turn 4 - but fortunately, it powered Leonin Elder, who gained all my life back the next turn when the Jar, Ornithopter, and Frogmite came down.

I drew a red land before she could draw a second land and shattered her Tree of Tales. I sat around abusing Clamp while she waited for Aether Vial to come through for her. Several turns later, she sent a Ravager, Frogmite, and two Disciples at me. She then realized she couldn't kill me that turn, and after I blocked her Disciples it was game over.

3-1, 6-3.

Round 5: That guy with B/G Oversold Cemetery
Game one: He stalled with a Pulse of the Tangle to try and draw out his third black land. I won with Myr Enforcer, Ravager, and Disciple.

Game two, we played a similar game: I attacked and sacked everything to an Ornithopter, only to realize I had done the math wrong and would lose if he topdecked either artifact hate or a Death Cloud. He didn't, and I won.

4-1, 8-3

Round 6: Some guy with Goblin Bidding
I can't remember his name, but he couldn't stand the fact that a fifteen-year old kid beat him.

Game one: I had a sick draw and beat him on turn 5. Game two, I won with an equally strong draw.

Just like testing, this match was no contest.

5-1, 10-3.

Round 7: Grant Struck, playing MWC
Everything went downhill from here. I knew I would probably have to play control at some point - and my plan was to get a good draw and hope they didn't have Wrath of God. After double Shrapnel Blasting in response to Pulse of the Fields, I barely won game one.

Games two and three, I had to waste my Shrapnel Blasts on Stabilizer-forced Angel tokens. Eternal Dragon polished me off both games.

5-2, 10-5.

With two losses relatively early on, I knew my shot at the Top 8 were slim, but I played on. The Top 64 players received prizes, so I figured there was no point in dropping.

Round 8: A man playing Mono-Red Goblins
When he played the mountain and Goblin Sledder on turn 1, I knew I had a good shot at winning. A Bolt took away his Goblin Sharpshooter and cleared the way for the victory. Game two, Pyroclasm ruined him.

There isn't much to this matchup; you get Goblins to play defense by threatening them early and then finishing them off with Ravager and Shrapnel Blast.

6-2, 12-5.

Round 9: Eric Gutierrez, playing U/W Control
He told me that so far he was 5-0 against Ravager, which worried me a bit. A few turns into the game, I realized what he was playing and lost all of that anxiety.

Game one, I crushed him with the usual suspects. Game two, he dropped Akroma's Vengeance before I could find a red land in order to Shatter his Damping Matrix and win the game. (He also drew three Purges and Akroma's Vengeance.)

Game three, he topdecked his fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh land on the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh turns. He played Wrath on turn 5, Vengeance turn 6, and Eternal Dragon on turn 7. I lost that game.

6-3, 13-7.

Round 10: That guy in the red shirt who I talked to at lunch who started 5-0 playing Astral Slide.
This match was strictly no contest, since my deck loses to Slide seven out of ten times. Akroma's Vengeance is bad for me, as is Pulse of the Fields. As is Eternal Dragon. And Wrath of God. And Astral Slide. And Renewed Faith.

You get the picture.

I don't remember the exact details except that he had two Lightning Rifts in one of the games.

Oh. And Lightning Rift. That's bad, too.

6-4, 13-9.

Round 11: Chris with Elf and Nail
There were three people playing Elf Tooth and Nail at the Seattle Regionals. Two of them (including my opponent) went 7-4, while the other won the whole thing. I won't say more than I have to about the deck, but it is really good against Affinity, but bad against most of the other decks in the field. The guy who won it all had a 9-0-2 record - including an amazing matches against Affinity. The deck is going to be written about soon by someone by one of its designers - or so the buzz around northwestmagic.com is. The deck is pretty good, and a lot more consistent than Urzatron and Cloudpost Tooth and Nail.

Enough about that, though. Game one I got double-Skullclamp online and finished him off quickly... But his artifact removal in games two and three bought him time to set up a lethal Tooth and Nail.

6-5, 14-11.

To recap: A deck is not just good because it beats Ravager and Goblins. This may seem obvious, but that's not what has been repeated over and over. In this format, I think the best deck would either be Bidding with plenty of artifact hate in the sideboard and a playset of Bolts - or Tooth and Nail, if it could figure out a way to keep alive against Goblins. I'm not sure how Electrostatic Bolt and Starstorm would hurt the deck's consistency, but it's definitely a deck worth looking into.

Another thing to keep in mind is that despite plenty of Top 8's for Ravager, that number is skewed by the large number of Ravager decks in each tournament. At least a few of the Affinity decks had to have gotten the right draws and right matchups to qualify, but the deck does have a tough time against a properly built control deck. When Affinity has good matchups, it does fine - but outside of that it can really falter.

Matthew Greene
ehsteve42@hotmail.com