The last time I wrote an article for StarCityGames.com was in April after attending my first Standard Tournament, and the warm reception that that simple article received from friends and strangers alike was encouraging enough to make me want to do it again. Since then, I have played in several more Standard tournaments, including Regionals and a couple other random Standard events with varying degrees of success. I must admit that Mountain Regionals was an unqualified disaster for my entire team. The best record among us was only able to manage a paltry placing in the mid-fifties. I foolishly allowed one of my teammates to talk me into playing Madness instead of Beats, with disastrous results....

But that's enough of this senseless ranting about Standard. This is a story about my most recent foray into the land of broken Type I Power.

On a fairly regular basis, Mile High Comics holds a Type I tournament for cash prizes in Denver, Colorado. There is no entry fee for this tournament and a top prize of $250. The offer of free money attracts the (often smelly) cream of the local Type I players like blowflies to a rotting whale carcass. More and more, preregistration is becoming a must at Mile High as they limit the number of entries to sixty-four players. This creates a manageable number of Swiss Rounds (six), and a decent chance of actually getting into the money if a player is smart enough to guess the metagame constraints. I believe a quick description of my team is required to get the flavor of what went on and why this article is called what it is.

I went to this tournament with a total of four other guys who would call each other and me allies. Adam Ramsay is a college student, computer guru, and has been my friend for years. He brought fully-powered 'Phid to the tournament - and why not? If you've got it, flaunt it! From prior discussion with Adam, he had briefly considered bringing powered Academy with five SoLo Moxen, but decided against it as he feared GAT and Hulk Smash enough to not play combo Magic. Zach Moroni is a high school student playing a good, but unpowered Oath deck; Zach is one of the finest young Magic players I know. Jason Blanchard is Zach's friend and another High-school student. He is also a well-read Magic player and he was playing Sligh, but without Ankh of Mishra. Josh Egner was the final member of the team; he is known for running a savage Extended Enchantress deck that I expected him to play (including whatever Type One goodness he could come up with), but instead, he chose to play unpowered Deck Parfait, which generates a hilarious lock on just about any aggro deck in a hurry.

That was the team, and we all decided beforehand to draw where appropriate with each other if it would advance the cause of the team. I will comment upon this practice and its uber-foolishness later.

Now me, I have been running a Fluctuator combo Deck in Type I for some time now. I first ran this thing at a Type I Two-Headed Giant Tournament last year. If you remember the old Standard Fluctuator Deck when Urza Block first came out, then you know the utter frustration that it caused when it first appeared on the scene. The plan back then was to cycle off half your deck after casting a turn 2 Fluctuator and then follow up on turn 3 with a Dark Ritual and Living Death to raise up like ten to twenty creatures to compete with your opponent's none. This boneheaded (but hilarious) play got Fluctuator banned in Standard from what I understand.

The deck I designed last year worked in a fashion completely dissimilar to that. You see, there was a card from Ice Age that I had been trying to abuse ever since that set came out: Songs of the Damned. In case you don't know what this card is (or haven't clicked on the link), this is an instant for B that says,"Add B to your mana pool for each creature in your graveyard." Upon initial inspection, this card appears to be very difficult to do anything with other than act as an additional Dark Ritual. This is due to the fact that there was not an effective method of piling creatures into your graveyard in a selective manner in anything more than three-creature lumps. This, of course could be accomplished with Buried Alive, but that's slow and pointless. Sure, nowadays you can Traumatize yourself and wantonly pile half of your library into the graveyard, but this plan is far too random. It has the unfortunate side effect of dragging cards that you probably need to use to win along with the creatures you want in the graveyard. So that method is pretty much out, particularly in Type 1 due to the speed of the format and the effectiveness of the control you'll be facing.

So in order to abuse Songs, what I wanted to do is stock my graveyard with creatures in a manner that is effective (cheap), fast (turn 2-3), selective (doesn't destroy your deck, hand or resources) and difficult to stop (preferably uncounterable). Such a method simply didn't exist until Saga Block came around - and with it, the advent of cycling. Songs of the Damned was not Standard-legal at that time and certain other combos were so much more attractive then that the idea that I'm presenting didn't necessarily vault into the public consciousness. At least, nobody cared enough to try.

Upon seeing the cycling creatures in Saga and Legacy, I realized that there finally was a good way to stock the graveyard with creatures and cause Songs of the Damned to turn from a Dark Ritual into a real Mana Bomb. But the cycling mechanic was still somewhat lacking in speed due to the cost of two mana per creature. Then I saw the Fluctuator, and something in my head went"click." The general idea of the deck I eventually designed revolved around getting Fluctuator into play, and then putting as many creatures in the graveyard as possible for free. Then I would cast Songs of the Damned to make a bunch of black mana and use broken restricted cards to draw even more cards so I could repeat the process. I would generally keep on cycling until I had enough black mana from Songs of the Damned to Drain Life my opponent to death with Counterspell backup, or leaving myself enough mana to at least try again.

Playtesting this mess actually ended up being very encouraging, as I was able to score kills on turn 3-4 on a simulated opponent on around a 75% basis. Sometimes the kill was even quicker than that, depending on how frequently I would draw a Fluctuator in the opening hand. So what I now had on my hands was a combo that is effective, quick to execute, selective, and difficult to disrupt once it had begun. It had the further advantage of being a complete surprise to my opponents, who had no clue what hit them and then had no way to disrupt it by the time they realized what was happening. The deck was still missing something, though - a kicker to add a finishing blow to an opponent at a high life total. The little gem that I discovered to have good synergy with the deck was the heretofore completely-unused Haunting Misery from Weatherlight. This is a bad card in any other deck, much like Songs of the Damned - but in this deck, this card is a Fireball. It allows you to remove any number of creatures in your graveyard from the game to deal that much damage to a target opponent for the low price of 1BB. In Haunting Misery, I had discovered a synergistic finisher card that could net ten to fifteen damage all by itself simply by converting the resource of creatures in the graveyard into damage. Here is a look at the deck list of my old Fluctuator deck.

Fluctuator.dec circa July 2002

THE COMBO
4 Fluctuator

BROKEN/DRAW/UTILITY
1 Windfall
1 Stroke of Genius
2 Flux
1 Frantic Search
4 Songs of the Damned
1 Time Spiral
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Demonic Tutor

KILL
2 Drain Life
1 Haunting Misery

CYCLING MEN
4 Wild Dogs
4 Pendrell Drake
2 Sandbar Merfolk
4 Darkwatch Elves
4 Bloated Toad
3 Sandbar Serpent

MANA
1 Lotus Petal
1 Sol Ring
1 Island
1 Swamp
4 Polluted Mire
4 Remote Isle
4 Blasted Landscape
4 Underground Sea

Sideboard:
4 Force of Will
11 other cards that I can't remember and probably didn't use. Ever.

This deck was pretty fun to play. It had broken drawing spells, a tutor, and a bizarre sort of feel to it when I played it. I mean come on, when isn't a deck that plays Fluctuator fun? But"bizarre and fun" is one thing, and"effective" is another. In order to determine if this deck could ever be a contender, I knew that it would have to be tested in the crucible of tournament fire. So I took this deck to the Type 1 tournament at my local store.

I ended up going 5-1 that day, only losing one match to Adam Ramsay, that match being the finals. I took Adam the distance in that match, who by the way was running fully powered Counter-Burn with Morphlings and Urza's Rages that day.

Times have changed; cards have utterly transformed not only the Standard environment, but Type I as well. Keeper with its Morphling has seemingly been supplanted by Hulk Smash, which uses Psychatog to serve up death in one massive, ugly blow instead of the slow, grinding clock of a 'Phling. Various broken combo decks like Tolarian Academy have reappeared using the Storm Mechanic, and other ridiculous decks like TnT and $T4Ks which abuse Mishra's Workshop have risen to prominence. But for the most part, Aggro and Aggro-control are all over the place, opening the door wide for combo to ram its face into the middle of the debate. So when I decided to play in the Type 1 Tournament at Mile High, the possibility of playing a new, improved version of Fluctuator entered my mind immediately.

Fluctuator.dec 2003
1 Mox Diamond
1 Sol Ring
1 Lotus Petal
1 Mana Crypt
4 Songs of the Damned
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Vampiric Tutor
4 Fluctuator
1 Cephalid Coliseum
1 Polluted Delta
1 Badlands
3 Underground Sea
4 Blasted Landscape
3 Remote Isle
3 Polluted Mire
1 Drifting Djinn
4 Primoc Escapee
4 Pendrell Drake
4 Keeneye Aven
4 Cloud of Faeries
3 Sandbar Serpent
1 Sandbar Merfolk
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Infernal Contract
1 Ill-Gotten Gains
2 Reaping the Graves
2 Miscalculation
2 Tendrils of Agony

SB: 2 Cunning Wish
SB: 2 Misdirection
SB: 3 Duress
SB: 2 Miscalculation
SB: 1 Divert
SB: 2 Force of Will
SB: 1 Fire / Ice
SB: 1 Ebony Charm
SB: 1 Stroke of Genius

People will no doubt look at this and say something like this:"What the hell is this clown smoking?!" I would say to them,"Don't laugh; it works." How does it work? Well, the best plan is to play Fluctuator. How about that? As we discussed, lots of interesting things happen when that goofy card hits play.

Let me just say before I explain how this deck works that whatever Wizards was thinking when they designed Storm, it couldn't have been anything good. It may not have even been rational. When I saw Storm and started thinking of how to abuse it, I came to the immediate realization that I already was in possession of a deck that relied upon casting an immense string of spells to win. Hence, via the aid of storm, the Fluctuator deck had just developed a new and more reliable kill mechanism.

I immediately redesigned the deck, slimming it down on the mana requirement side (both in number and off-color requirements) added a Tutor, added some broken mana artifacts that I had obtained and included Tendrils of Agony for the kill. I kept the business end of the deck pretty much the same, using Songs of the Damned and mana artifacts to make a great deal of mana and playing a great number of spells to fuel a huge Tendrils of Agony or two. This was all fine and great when I was testing the deck on Apprentice - except that I frequently ran out of cards to cycle and play too quickly to build up a sufficiently large Tendrils. This is due to the fact that cycling is a zero-sum game (one card in = one card out) and that in order to make a decent storm you have to cast four or five spells just to get started.

Then I noticed another Storm spell that might just solve the card problem I was: The efficient and nearly uncounterable Reaping the Graves. In addition to being a storm spell that benefited from my mad spellcasting, this card typically dug up four or more creatures from the graveyard without nearly as much risk of being countered as other spells. The spell's position as an instant is also gravy, as it can protect your graveyard from your opponent's Tormod's Crypt and keep you rolling in the face of some spells that otherwise force you to stop playing.

There is some interesting synergy between Reaping the Graves and the cycling critters when Fluctuator is in play. Let's say you have already cast three to four spells prior to play Reaping the Graves; at this point it nets you four to five creatures from the graveyard. That essentially means an additional four or five extra cards you are drawing from your library for free when the Fluctuator is in play! All this for the low cost of three mana as well!

Even if your opponent decides to try and counter some of your spells leading up to this, it actually works to your advantage as the storm builds up even higher. I make this statement, as I find that few if any are playing the uber-powerful Stifle except as a defensive measure against Tendrils of Agony, if then.

My answer to Stifle by the way, is to just cast Tendrils again and again until they are dead.

Well, you can see the rest of how this thing works I'm betting. I end up recurring this process and digging through my whole deck in a near orgy of cycling. Typically contained within this process is the casting of all four Songs of the Damned, most of my cheap mana artifacts, and whatever other things happen to crop up. The coup de grace of this deck looks like this:"I pay 2BB for Tendrils of Agony. I put X+1 copies on the stack, where X is equal to # of spells cast this turn. Still not dead yet? Okay... How about another Tendrils of Agony. Not dead yet? How about Ill-Gotten Gains to fetch a pair of Tendrils of Agony and Yawgmoth's Will? I cast Tendrils of Agony. Twice. Man, you're resilient. How about we try this business one more time with our buddy Yawgmoth? Okay...Good Game."

As you can see, if some disaster occurs I typically still have enough mana from repeated castings of Songs of the Damned that I can use the nuclear options of Yawgmoth's Will and Ill-Gotten Gains to help me out of otherwise untenable situations. Furthermore, please remember that this process can happen very quickly: If the Fluctuator gets down in the first couple of turns, there is a good possibility that you can go off at any time after that. Second- and third-turn kills are not uncommon if you are not disrupted, with some freak first-turn kills occurring occasionally.

That's the plan, anyway.

Some discussion about the card choices I've made is in order, I think. Most of the cards in the main deck ought to speak for themselves or have been explained to death. If you need a diagrammed explanation for cards like Yawgmoth's Will or Ill-Gotten Gains, you need help, sir. The most interesting things requiring explanation exist in the sideboard.

Most people completely disagree with my inclusion of the Cunning Wish in the board. Under normal circumstances, I would agree with those people, but note that Cunning Wish can be used as an extra spell in the string before you Reap the Graves or Tendril. This is a valid play, and I believe I actually used it once or twice during the tournament after sideboarding. The problem with this strategy is that without Black Lotus/Mox Jet/Mox Sapphire in the deck, colored mana is at such a premium that it is nearly impossible to go off while needing to come up with that extra blue mana I would need to Wish for a spell before I can Reap. The Wishes are simply in the board to add utility in the control matchup, where I will have plenty of time to set up the Combo anyway. Wishes also give me access to Fire / Ice, Ebony Charm and Stroke of Genius, which are all great against the proper matchups. Sligh hates Fire / Ice, Dragon (and any other graveyard-lovin' deck) hates Ebony Charm and if Oath runs out of cards you can kill them with a Stroke for one, should the Oath player empty their deck.

Divert is a cute little card that I have begun playing with as a spare Misdirection. In a counterwar, this thing is nuts, as Divert > Force Spike in the Counterspell battle. There is nothing like Diverting that turn 1 Ancestral Recall/Mind Twist/Sinkhole/Hymn to Tourach without losing card advantage!

Duress is in the sideboard as it is one of the only cards that can break the game open for me against certain (read: Phid) control matchups.

My playtesting with my team on Apprentice has really told me a lot about what matchups I can win and which ones I can't, both pre- and-post sideboard. As a general rule, decks that play a ton of countermagic beat me by getting their win condition down on the table and keeping my combo out of contention for long enough to win. Hard aggro decks like Stompy, Sligh, TnT, and MaskNaught are sort of a coinflip depending whether if they get the draw that can just cleave your head off or not. I can't do much to disrupt them in game one, but I can just win against most of them before they can get critical mass of combat/direct damage pointed at me. Combo decks that don't involve control had better be fast if they want a chance to win against this deck. Unless another combo player gets an absolute God Draw where they can just say"I Win" in the first couple of turns, the game may turn into a race to build up whatever resource each deck relies upon and then going off. Academy Rector/whatever combo decks are sort of an X factor, as they represent a troubling matchup for me. These guys incorporate a great deal more hand destruction as part of their combo than most decks. But again, this turns out to be a match of who gets the draw and who doesn't.

The final few decks that I was worried about in this gauntlet were Sui Black, Hulk Smash and Staks. I would classify Sui Black as mostly, well.... Evil. It happens to be a terrible matchup for me on many levels. They have disruption, big monsters that can come out quickly, and land death. This is a terrible combination of effects for me to face. Staks, which along with Hulk Smash is apparently becoming the deck to beat in the Type 1 metagame, is actually something of a laughable matchup for me unless they come up with a turn 1 Sphere of Resistance. Even with a turn 1 Sphere, I am typically able to get over the added mana requirement fairly quickly and ramp up to casting the things I need to win the game. Hulk Smash is a combo-control deck that relies upon the best creature in the game combined with the best creature pumper in the game. If the Hulk player draws a boatload of control, it is much harder to win than if they get the combo pieces. At least you still have one turn to make something happen when they bring down the Tog. But if I have to burn out against a wall of control, I have a much worse chance to win against that deck.

Anyway, enough chatter. On to the Tournament Report!

I picked up Josh, Zach, and Jason that morning at the local card shop. It was a warm morning, even at 8:30 and later turned into a blistering day. Everybody was in good spirits as we rumbled down the Highway to Mile High Comics. We arrived to find the line in front of the store already pretty well packed with people.

I mentioned that it was warm: This means that even a blind person could have known that this was a horde of gamers due to the burgeoning funk. Adam greeted us and lent out the duals that he wasn't using to those of us too poor to buy the whole set. It's a good thing we all preregistered, as otherwise we might have been watching the festivities from the sidelines. In due course, the store opened and the queues formed up for preregistered and walk-in players. We all checked in and went about filling in the registration sheets, this process being the thing I hate most about tournaments. I am always terrified of registering an illegal deck, and frequently check and recheck what I've written down vs. what I have in hand. This paranoia subsided after Adam checked my sheet for me. Upon reflection, I don't know why this would comfort me, as Adam received a match loss at Regionals for misregistering his deck. At any rate, pairings soon went up and we were playing the cards we brought.

Round 1: James Matthews, Playing Suicide Black
I had no idea what Matt was playing... But I guarantee that I would have not done things the way I did if I knew better. After winning the die roll, I played first and foolishly decided to take a hand that included no Tutors, no broken mana artifacts, and no Fluctuator. I figured that he was playing something like random-aggro-men.dec, as this is what rounds 1 and 2 seem to consist of at this tournament. What a mistake that was!

After playing my"comes-into-play-tapped" cycling land and passing the turn, He went:"Swamp, Dark Ritual, Phyrexian Negator." After I swallowed my heart back down, I realized that trouble was ensuing early today. Mono Black Sui is one of my worst matchups - and I took a hand like this?! I tried to figure out what the heck to do about it and came up short. My Cephalid Coliseum never quite got active and I lost on the fifth turn after a flurry of hand destruction and Negator beats.

I figured this is probably the worst possible situation that could arise today - and I was right, as Sui black can wreck me so quick that it looks ill. I proceeded to sideboard in every speck of control I could muster and prayed for the best.

Game 2 wasn't much better. Again, I can't understand upon reflection why I took the hands I did in this match, because I opened up with the same situation: No broken mana, no Tutor, no Fluctuator. I guess I kept the hand anyway due to the Cephalid Coliseum and Misdirection I saw. On turn 1, we played lands and stared at each other. On turn 2 after I played Cephalid Coliseum and cycled a man, I saw him play another Swamp and tap for a Dark Ritual for a Sinkhole, targeting my Coliseum. I promptly pitched a cycling man and Misdirected the 'Hole at his untapped swamp; but he calmly tapped it in response and let it die. He then Sinkholed again! The land death just wrecked me this game when he proceeded to Vampiric Tutor for Dust Bowl the next turn. Ouch. I ended up dying some turns later to a rampaging Hypnotic Specter, even though I managed to cycle a decent number of cards through his barrage of land death. Unfortunately, this cycling happened without me ever finding a Fluctuator, tutor, or a broken mana-producing spell.

Oh yeah; this dude's deck is some good, by the way....

0-2, 0-1

Round 2: Marc Montano, Playing Counter-Burn
After getting my head handed to me on a platter by Sui Black, I took heart in the fact that now the pairings I got would be somewhat easier in the loser's bracket. I also had the ignominy of being one of two people in the team to lose round one (Jason bought it as well).

I sat down across from Marc and he promptly misshuffled his deck, with cards flying face-up all over the place. I tried not to look, but burn and countermagic were all over the table, like the ichors from some bizarre monstrosity. I noted however that anything is better than Sui Black. We finished shuffling and cut each other's decks. I then lost the die roll and he played first, going Shivan Reef, Lightning Bolt on turn 1. I remember thinking,"Okay, thanks for kicking yourself too, dude." So, I went Badlands, Sol Ring, and I cycled a critter. He helped me out again by using the Shivan Reef to kick himself in the shins for red mana again to Incinerate me or something on turn 2. I can't recall. It doesn't matter, as I ripped Demonic Tutor off the top of my deck. I then played another land, Tutored up a Fluctuator, and slapped the broken artifact down. Marc declined to respond to me casting the ultimate source of his death. After cycling a great number of cards for free, I played Lotus Petal or Mox Diamond so I could cast Songs of the Damned. This allowed me to dig up a total of five creatures with Reaping the Graves and Cycle them again. I kept on cycling and casting spells and ultimately exploded his head with a pair of juiced Tendrils of Agony. I expected some token resistance, but got none.

I didn't really sideboard in game 2 except for putting in a Cunning Wish for a Reaping the Graves just so I could get an extra spell in the Storm string or have access to an emergency Force of Will or Misdirection should the need arise. Things began well enough in game 2 except for his continuous, obnoxious Bolting of me on turns 1 and 2. He was nice enough to at least use his Shivan Reef for his red mana again, though. I got down the Fluctuator on turn 2 again and after a flurry of cycling I cast Reaping the Graves for three copies but ended up getting stuck in a section of uncyclable cards. I had to pass the turn at only thirteen life due to the two Bolts he threw at me and a fetchland I used to find Underground Sea. Turn 3 saw him get down Ball Lightning, leaving me at seven. Still fairly confident of my position, I accepted the turn back from him and topdecked....

Underground Sea.

That sucked, as I only had three of those in the deck and had only cycled five men into the graveyard with no Songs of the Damned to play with (having used the only one I could find to reap the graves the previous turn). I played the land and passed the turn with a prayer that he didn't have some random burn spell to go with a Fireblast in his hand. He untapped, drew, played a mountain and cast Keldon Champion. This was a further six damage after attacking, leaving me at one.

Let me tell you, by the way, that I was quite relieved to see that Champion as opposed to something else. So I accepted the turn back, hanging on by a fraying strand of floss and drew... Demonic Tutor. In play I had Badlands, two Underground Seas, Sol Ring and Fluctuator. My hand consisted of Fluctuator, Tendrils of Agony, Ill-Gotten Gains, Yawgmoth's Will, and the Tutor. Knowing this was my last chance to do something I thought long and hard about the play that I had to make immediately - or die. I decided to tap the Sol Ring and Badlands to Tutor up Lotus Petal and played it, sacrificing it for black mana. I used the two remaining mana from my Underground seas, the one from the Petal and the one remaining from the Sol ring to cast Ill-Gotten Gains. I discarded my hand and whatever Marc got back I don't know - but I got back Will, Lotus Petal, and Songs of the Damned. I played the Petal for the second time that turn and sacrificed it for black again to play Songs, making five Mana. Then I threw down Yawgmoth's Broken-ass Will, leaving me with two black in my pool. I played Lotus Petal from the graveyard for the third time this turn and sacrificed it for blue mana this time. I used one of the black to"flashback" Songs of the Damned for five more mana and then cast Cloud of Faeries from the Graveyard, remembering not to untap lands due to the errata. With exactly four mana left in my pool, I then cast Tendrils of Agony.

When the smoke cleared, I had cast ten spells that turn (if you weren't keeping track) and Storm had effectively blown him away by draining him for an unbelievable twenty life. I shook his unbelieving hand and turned in the results sheet.

2-2, 1-1

Round 3: John Penn, Playing Some Green/Black Thingy
After lunch, we came back to find pairings up. I was hoping to move up in the standings a bit now, as I was still in the loser's bracket and expected at least one more fairly easy match. I was not disappointed when I ended up squaring off against some big kid with braces.

We shook hands, shuffled, cut and rolled. I won the die roll and said that I would play. I looked at my hand and nearly fainted, seeing Mana Crypt, Fluctuator and a ton of cycling cards staring back at me.

I call his deck a"green/black thingy" earlier because I never really saw much of it in action. That's because he never had a chance to show me what it could do. On turn 1, I whipped out the Mana Crypt and Fluctuator and proceeded to cycle off about half my deck. I then threw down the spells I had drawn from this horde of cycling, which consisted of Lotus Petal, Songs of the Damned, Sol Ring, Tendrils of Agony, Yawgmoth's Will, Tendrils.

He called me"cheap" after I finished up this string of Solitaire Magic. Cheap was not my concern at that moment, as he was still just as dead, having never played a permanent. Cheap or not, that's Type I dude!

In game 2, I saw him get down a turn 1 Basking Rootwalla, which might have concerned me if I was at Regionals. By turn 3, he had dealt six damage to me off of the Lizard. That was when I decided to kick my ass worse than he ever could. I started off with the Fluctuator I had drawn on turn 3 so I could cycle off the several cards I had in hand. I quickly accelerated the arms race by casting Songs of the Damned for several mana so I could cast Infernal Contract. I lost half my life to draw four cards and then cycled off a bunch more of my deck. I then started casting what I dug up from cycling by going Songs, Songs, and Reaping the Graves again. I started cycling ad infinitum to dig up my win condition and finished with a pair of Tendrils for the win.

You may pick up your jock at the lost and found, kid.

4-2, 2-1

Round 4: Josh Egner playing Deck Parfait
I sat down after checking my table number for pairings and up came my teammate Josh. He asked me what table I was at and he got a real nervous look on his face when I told him. He told me that he is matched up against me.

That really sucked to be him. First off, he's playing Parfait, which means he deals with creatures, not combo magic. Aura of Silence can be a pain in my ass, but that's really all he's got in game one other than Ivory Mask and Zuran Orb. From playtesting against Josh, it was painfully obvious that he could not beat my deck no matter what he did. Even on the odd occasion when he got down Aura of Silence, I could still typically obliterate him by turn 3 or 4. Anyhow, the sad little look that he gave me made something in me snap.

Even now, the words are as molten brass upon my lips when I think of them."Wanna ID?" I asked.

(Rant) I mean come on. It was only one tie, right? You can have a tie and make top 8, Right? RIGHT??? Wrong. Do not do this ever. Even if this dude is your best friend in the world, even if he is your ride home, even if he is loaning you the cards you are going to bash him with: Do not ID with him. Especially if you know you own him. Make him concede, but do not ID him. Ultimately, it just screws you both. It costs the team points overall and will inevitably swing back around like a boomerang at your skull and brain you.

You see, a win is worth three points and a tie is worth one. Not one and a half - just one. This means that one point from the match disappears into the aether forever, benefiting only the players who happen to be ranked 1 through 8. This Means You, Jonathan Job! Curse you for encouraging me to draw with my teammate!

You see, in order to break into the top 8 you must maximize the number of points you can generate. So instead of climbing up in the rankings and pressuring the top players who are getting three points nearly every round, you fall two points off the pace and have to pray you can a) win out or, b) hope you have really good tiebreaks. But the tiebreaks are not a good thing to rely upon! If you ID and only pick up one point, you are essentially allowing the people who were previously below you to catch up and in some cases even pass you. So it's like getting paired down without the pain of losing your match. Also, if you do this, your tiebreaks will consist of having murdered people who you essentially own and who will end up at 3-3 or worse! This makes your breaks blow. (End Rant)

Oh yeah. 4-2-2, 2-1-1

Round 5: Aron Mcelhaney, Playing Random Control Elements
Still deluded into believing I was fine at this point, I cheerily went about my business. These games were a blur of violence in my mind perpetrated by me upon a seemingly helpless opponent. I saw real Counterspells and Mana Leaks in his deck when he shuffled his deck face-up at me. Man, that's annoying! I was a little concerned this might suck some, due to the presence of control in his deck.

Aron won the roll and elected to go first. I was apparently wrong to be concerned about his control, as my first-turn Mox Diamond/Underground Sea/Fluctuator combo went off completely uncontested. I then got stuck after a bunch of cycling and had to pass the turn back to him. He played another land and remained silent. A brutal turn 2 culminated in me plowing him off the board beginning with my typical, mad cycling attack, which was accompanied by the casting of broken, free mana artifacts. To accomplish this, I then tapped a dual land for a single black mana and cast Songs of the Damned to fuel a pair of Reaping the Graves, allowing me to cycle through most of my deck and finish up the storm with a pair of Tendrils after playing most of the artifacts in my deck. At this point I was pretty firmly convinced things were going to be okay in this match.

Game 2 saw him side in the mad, mad tech card of: (get this) Lifeforce. Lo and behold, the horror and broken Type 1 power of Lifeforce! So far, this dude hadn't shown me a forest or another source of green mana so I was wondering what was going on. Hey, they were Beta Lifeforces, after all. Anyway, I won on turn 3 in a fashion similar to the one mentioned above. I felt some small pity on this guy, as I had won without him ever casting a spell in the entire match.

6-2-2, 3-1-1 (10 points)

Round 6
The boomerang brains me. Zach Moroni with Oath.

If the boomerang I threw in round 4 reached its furthest distance from me about halfway through round 5, it had come all the way back by the beginning of round 6 and cleaved open my head so Zach could eat the well-done brain out of my senseless head like so much cheese. It turns out that Zach also had ten points at this time, meaning the best either of us can do is to get thirteen points and pray the breaks get us into the top 8. This is a poor situation to find oneself in, as fourteen-plus points pretty much got you in. I figured out later that had I gone on and bashed Josh in round 4 so I could get up to nine points back then, I probably would have gotten a dude playing White Weenie in round 5 (unpowered, but with Jihads!) and who knows about round 6? To make a long story short, I should never have had to play Zach. But Magic Karma was apparently in full effect this day.

In game one I ripped an amazing opening hand with the Mana Crypt/Fluctuator combo again... And Zach promptly Force of Willed my Fluctuator. Bummer. I cycled cards desperately for several turns until I basically ran out of gas. I ended up having to make a desperate play to win at this point - not because Zach had Oath out, or the Spirit Cairn to hurt me, but because my own Mana Crypt was Bolting me each upkeep because I couldn't seem to win a coin flip! Also, I detected a weakness in Zach's hand and play, which indicated that I might have the ability to do something without his interference for at least one turn. I decided to go for the jugular and went ahead to cast Songs of the Damned and Infernal Contracted myself, losing seven life (going from thirteen to six). Although I drew four cards, I couldn't get anything off of it (like a Fluctuator or another Songs), so the Crypt got to continue molesting me. I ended up dying due to four consecutive lost flips.

Are you aware that there is a 6.25% chance of having four flips come up against you in succession? That's almost like hitting the lotto in Magic. (It's also one flip away from getting a Goblin Bomb to go off.) Ironically, Zach didn't have to make a single offensive move toward me other than to counter some spells and let me do his dirty work for him.

Game 2 saw me board in Duress and get down the Fluctuator through Zach's Counterwall thanks to said Duress. I then proceeded to go nuts with a string of cycling and spells, which culminated in an Ill-Gotten Gains to fetch myself two Songs and a Tendrils of Agony. I then got off the Tendrils for a full twenty life.

Game 3 saw a shift in strategy where we both ended up sideboarding again. His strategy ended up being better than mine when he got an Oath active and Oathed up Phantom Nishoba, bastard cat that it is. Then I couldn't topdeck anything to save my butt even though I got down the Fluctuator and cycled a ton of cards. An angry kitty then consumed my brains.

Dammit.

Final Record 7-4-2, 3-2-1

What Happened Afterwards...
I cursed and packed up, all the while blaming Josh for"forcing" me to ID him. Oh well, it's not his fault I didn't have enough sack to kick his ass. I learned a valuable lesson that day: If you have the opportunity to roll your teammates, do it. If you do not, and show mercy, you will die a horrible death at the hands of your own peeps later. Anyhow, the top 8 ended up organizing a split so they all took home fifth bucks and some store credit. Because his tiebreaks were sort of crappy, Zach ended up in 11^th place and out of the money anyway.

Overall, the team did well. Ironically, Adam ended up 3-3, which he considered a massive misplay on his part of the metagame. He must be right, especially considering his fully-powered deck. Zach was 4-1-1 and had the team's best record. Jason was 3-3, and Josh was 3-0-3 if I recall correctly.

What could I have done differently? Well, that subject has been done to death already, I think. I also think that overall, I could make some improvements to my deck. Some obvious changes would be to obtain some power. My playtesting with various power cards indicates that if anything, the deck gets even faster (imagine that...) but without some sort of protection against control, it's just another combo deck waiting to be disrupted. One card I obtained the day of the tournament that I believe would have a huge effect upon the deck is Bazaar of Baghdad. This ridiculous card would give me access to the ability to effectively use Circular Logic and Deep Analysis. The problem that I've always had with the Bazaar, though, is its inherent card disadvantage. It can fire me back up again by replacing dead cards in hand with cyclers, but at other times it just mangles my hand when activated, forcing me to bleed combo pieces like a stuck pig. Graveyard recursion acts as a finger in the dyke against this tide of card loss - but as always, this is susceptible to any number of forms of control or disruption.

My guess is that I just need to bite down and redesign my deck to include better defensive measures like Defense Grid and Orim's Chant or Abeyance. I think I will end up maindecking Chant/Abeyance to defend against Sui Black and disruption in general for Game 1, while Defense Grid could go in against control to prevent situations like the one that happened in match 6 from becoming a near auto-loss. Who knows? Chant might even have been able to keep me alive for long enough to do something in round 1.

In the final analysis, this deck is at its heart a pure combo engine revolving around one card: Fluctuator. As a result, it is vulnerable to disruption and control, like so many other decks that revolve around a single card. The good thing that I have discovered about this deck is that even in the absence of a Fluctuator draw, it is possible to come up with enough cycling dudes to combo someone out. What that means is that Storm is just disgusting. That was the general consensus among all of the Type I players that I have spoken with. Look at what happened in match 2, for crying out loud! That poor dude was beating me to death, and I still came out of nowhere to eat him alive! Now granted, I had some really broken cards in hand - but without Storm, I would have been sunk pretty badly. Remember, I never had more than six mana in my pool at any time in that game, which I find amazing. Typically, my insane mana production puts me in the range of fatal mana burn if my kill spells don't resolve that turn.

Well, it's time for me to run, so until then keep your eyes on the primary concern at a competitive Type One tournament: Winning at all tournament-legal costs!

I believe what I am supposed to say now is,"I'm Out."

Shawn Buell