Sounds like some phony ad, right? Yet, being a very poor player in an area where there are only two stores that sell cards, I have to play with cheap decks. When you also figure that my playgroup is still pretty competitive (they all started playing around Antiquities, it seems), and we decided to let people play any deck that’s legal in any Constructed sanctioned format, I almost have to play T1. That need taught me to love the format, and also to try to play cheap decks in the supposedly most expensive format in the magic world.

Thus, when I read Matt Smith’s article* I felt compelled to write an article, maybe even a series, just to help clear the smokescreen that seems to hang around T1. Yet I don’t want this to be yet another rebuttal... Just more of an article that uses the opening that Smith’s article has created.

So today, I’ll show my pet deck — Stompy! It’s the only competitive deck that I’ve ever been able to play, and I’m sticking to it no matter what. So first, a quick rundown of T1’s general metagame; it’s a"general" rundown because you can’t really know EVERY deck that is competitive:

Aggro:

• Sligh
• Black weenie/Hatred
• Stompy
• White Weenie
• Zoo
• Butter Knives

Aggro-control:

• Accelerated Blue

Control:

• Keeper
• Miscellaneous decks of various colors (there really are too many of them)
• Deck parfait
• Draw-go
• Pox
• Nether Void
• U/B colour
• Must be some Oath somewhere! 8)

Combo:

• Turboland
• Trix
• Replenish (21)
• Just about every 1.X combo deck

I think that by now, it’s pretty obvious one can’t metagame against a single deck, or even a couple of decks. You need to metagame against the whole field, see general tendencies, and use these to your advantage. What are the tendencies that are obvious? Mainly, the use of non-basics.

Apart from that, considering the fact that we’re playing an aggro deck, the other thing we can see is that control usually has three ways to deal with weenies effectively: Moat, Balance, and The Abyss. Balance is a double-edged sword, considering the fact that Stompy can empty its hand so fast, and the other two cost a magic four mana. I say a"magic" four mana, because Stompy can kill on Turn 3 or 4 if it’s undisrupted, meaning that we only need to make control lose a single land drop to be able to win that game. Thus, let’s use four Wastelands and one Strip Mine! But playing with non-forest lands means another thing: We can’t play too much without having to lose the Land Grants, which help thin the deck and can be used as Dryad/Bounty of the Hunt fodder. That leaves us with two choices: Play with only one or two Strip or Wastelands, or play with more, and lose the Grants for basic forests.

Personally, I used to prefer the former, but I’ve tried the latter and have now been converted. So this is what I use currently (on Apprentice, that is):

12 Forests
4 Elvish Spirit Guides
4 Quirion Rangers

4 Wastelands
1 Strip Mine

4 Rogue Elephants
4 Skyshroud Elites
4 Skyshroud Ridgebacks
4 Vine Dryads
2 Hidden Herds

4 Giant Growths 4 Bounty of the Hunt
4 Rancors
4 Briar Shields
1 Berserk

Sideboard:

4 elvish lyrists
3 emerald charms
4 powder kegs
4 null rods

That’s right — no moxen, and no Black Lotus. The only two restricted cards are Strip Mine and Berserk, and I replace the latter with Hidden Herd in real life. The deck has no disruption apart from the five Wastes and Strips, except for one thing that is often overlooked: because the opponent can easily see that he loses if he can’t stop the horde before turn 4, it makes the opposition turn all of its energies toward stopping the horde, and not winning in itself, which is often enough disruption. The sideboard is there in game 2 to help versus control or White Weenie. Keg helps versus just about anything, but you have to use judgement. Rods mainly help against control, and Charms and Lyrist are there to help against anything that has bad enchantments around.

So how much would it cost to build that deck? Probably less than your average T2 deck, and you can have much more fun against a much more open field!

Next time? Powerless accelerated blue. Yes, I’ll try converting the deck with all the mana artifacts to another one without any of the Power Nine. I don’t guarantee it’ll be any good, but it could prove itself interesting — so until next time, remember to get your daily dose of Type 1 at http://www.bdominia.com.

Paul Khuong, a.k.a. Sylvester

* - Someone at Beyond Dominia said us that Smith actually wanted to promote Type 1. I have no idea if that’s true or not, but I do know that it didn’t sound like that. But, that doesn’t matter, since it gave us all an opening to start writing about T1.