It would be good to note that this article will provide almost no new information to the crème of the Type 1 community. I doubt anything I could say has the power to do that. However, I think this should be helpful to people that aren't there yet, or never might be.

Everyone is arguing and standing around shocked as to how this recent upstart deck (Hulk) managed to unseat the scariest Type 1 opponent since the creation of the game. Well, here are my thoughts.

Keeper is known by many names: The Deck, the Franchise, and Restricted List are some of the few. Almost all the builds are very similar in vein. They all run the Power 9, four Mana Drains, four Force of Will, and Yawgmoth's Will. From there, they might diverge a little, but have very similar mana bases, a few spot kill cards, Balance, Tutors (Demonic Tutor and Mystical Tutor), and stuff like that. It was popularized by Brian Weissman back in 1994, and to this day, it is still the bar by which all other decks are judged. There may have been no appearances in the Vintage World Championship Top 8, but with twenty-five instances of The Deck showing up, beating Keeper is a necessity.

So how could a Psychatog-based Hulk Smash deck not only perform as well as it did, but utterly replace Keeper as the top control deck in the field? What is it about a little 1/2 (growing) critter that makes it's scarier than a first turn 12/12 trample creature? The situation is not simple. Stephen Menendian suggested that secrecy was a big part of the success. Nobody expected Hulk to show up in large numbers, so they were unprepared for it. Rogue decks are good, and sometimes do win the top spot, but not something of this enormity. No, Hulk Smash was the best deck going in, and even if everyone had the deck list, it still would have been the best deck.

Let's break it down in three and a half categories: card drawing, mana base, and kill condition. The other half-category is simply one card: Duress.

For reference, here is Carl Winter's Hulk deck from the Vintage World Championships:

First Place: Carl Winter, Hulk Smash
4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will
4 Brainstorm
4 Accumulated Knowledge
3 Cunning Wish
3 Duress
2 Merchant Scroll
2 Deep Analysis
3 Psychatog
2 Intuition
1 Mystical Tutor
1 Demonic Tutor
1 Ancestral Recall
1 Time Walk
1 Yawgmoth's Will
1 Black Lotus
1 Sol Ring
1 Mox Emerald
1 Mox Pearl
1 Mox Ruby
1 Mox Jet
1 Mox Sapphire
1 Library of Alexandria
2 Island
2 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
3 Volcanic Island
2 Tropical Island
4 Underground Sea

Sideboard:
1 Fire / Ice
1 Blue Elemental Blast
1 Mind Twist
3 Coffin Purge
1 Lim-Dul's Vault
2 Pernicious Deed
1 Artifact Mutation
1 Naturalize
1 Berserk
3 Red Elemental Blast

Claim Number One: Hulk Has Better Card Drawing Than Keeper
Keeper runs Ancestral Recall and Fact or Fiction. Some builds run Stroke of Genius as well, and maybe some unusual tech cards (like one Brainstorm, one Lim-Dul's Vault, etc.). It also has an array of tutors (Demonic Tutor, Mystical Tutor, Merchant Scroll, as well as one Vampiric Tutor every once in a while, which fetch it, as well as Regrowth and Yawgmoth's Will to bring it back and reuse it, generally the Ancestral).

Now let's look at Hulk. It has Ancestral Recall as well, and sometimes runs Fact or Fiction. However, beyond that, it has four Brainstorm, four Accumulated Knowledge, two Deep Analysis (in Carl Winter's deck, and it's a"Stroke of Genius"). Gush could be in there as well, although it's more of a kill card than actual card drawing. Furthermore, it has all those tutors I mentioned for Keeper (two Merchant Scroll in fact), and two Intuition, which are fantastic with Accumulated Knowledge.

Hulk has such a definite advantage in this category, it is hard for Keeper to"keep up" (I think I am the worst"punner" in existence). This is somewhat offset by cards like The Abyss, Balance, and main deck Mind Twist (Hulk has it in the sideboard in this particular build), which can generate card advantage in other ways, but none of those cards really hurt Hulk (originally, I missed the Naturalize in the sideboard, which once again proves just how right Stephen was when he mentioned that Hulk lives off its sideboard).

However, it doesn't need to. It can downright ignore most of the threats the opponent brings to the table, as long as it can still win with its rather large win condition (more of this later). Of course, Hulk also has the fantastic Pernicious Deed, which can clean the board by itself and make the player barely skip a heartbeat.

All in all, this probably is the main reason for Hulk's dominance.

Claim Number Two: Hulk Has a More Stable Mana Base
Let's look at Carl's mana base (outside of the Lotus, Sol Ring, Moxen). He carries:

1 Library of Alexandria
2 Polluted Delta
3 Flooded Strand
2 Tropical Island
3 Volcanic Island
4 Underground Sea
2 Island

Let's look at one of Keeper's mana base (swiped from Oscar Tan's article here). We shall ignore the mana artifacts and concentrate on the land.

1 Library of Alexandria
1 Strip Mine
4 Wasteland
1 City of Brass
1 Undiscovered Paradise
2 Polluted Delta
2 Flooded Strand
4 Underground Sea
3 Tundra
3 Volcanic Island

First, notice that Carl runs seventeen land, only one of which produces colorless mana, but obviously makes up for it in brutal strength (Library). Oscar runs six colorless lands. The Strip Mine and Wastelands are great to cripple an opponent, but we again must go to an unnumbered claim: Hulk can ignore a lot that Keeper cannot. Keeper also runs twenty-two lands, which is significantly more. It is aware of its own problem and tries to compensate by adding more land, which works, but cuts into its efficiency. I doubt Hulk will ever get stuck in a land clump, but it does happen for Keeper from time to time.

Not to mention that the two five-color lands really aren't very stable, or desirable. Hulk draws so many cards, it can definitely find enough to fix whatever color it needs to (such as the one Green mana, and the one Red mana it needs for the kill, or the occasional Artifact Mutation or Fire / Ice). The five fetchlands definitely add a lot of mana consistency and quality to the deck. (Though perhaps Carl can explain to me why he runs two Polluted Delta and three Flooded Strand in a deck with no white mana or cards. Obviously, it doesn't matter, since all the lands are Island-based, but it's just an odd combination.)

Obviously, Keeper has the fetchlands as well (only four though), but it cannot get the five-color lands, or the Strip Mine-type lands. Without the card draw, and the fact that it often is a four-color deck (this particular build killed Green entirely, which means that the additional card drawing of Sylvan Library and a Regrowthed Ancestral Recall are gone) hurts it further. While Black and Blue are the main mana base, it needs White and Red to combat rushes and certain emergency situations. Killing even one such land can hurt it over long-term, which means the fetchlands won't fetch the crucial Underground Seas as much as needed. Again, the five-color lands and the Strip Mines come back and hurt it further.

Hulk simply doesn't care. It will only use Blue (Black with Duress) to draw and manipulate the deck, drop a Black land to play Yawgmoth's Will and Psychatog (or maybe a side-board card), and then Red or Green should the immediate need arise. It really becomes easy to see why a lot of Claim Two relies on One to show the holes that Hulk Smash has plugged. It has two Islands, which I can only assume are protection against Back to Basics, Blood Moon, or, if one is really worried about Wastelands.

Claim Number Three: Hulk has a better kill condition
This could be a simple comparison between two creatures. Of course, it can't be just that, since by themselves, Morphling and the Psychatog are merely creatures that do damage. Morphling is even more usable, since it can protect and untap itself, and is obviously a more long-term solution. But we have to look at the game itself. Keeper draws some cards, counters everything the opponent throws (be it with Counterspells or the various silver bullets), then at some point, after having established control, drops the Morphling and wins in four turns, give or take.

Hulk is different. It draws a lot of cards, drops the Psychatog, makes it gigantic, and attacks for the win, ignoring most of the defense it faces. Discarding cards and removing them from the graveyard doesn't matter, since the game is won. As Oscar said, it's more important to win than to draw cards or have flashy effects. The addition of Berserk makes it a lot stronger, and while it probably doesn't need it, it's the one nail in the coffin that speeds things up.

This means that Hulk wins a lot faster. Some players might drop a"suicide" Morphling turn 2 or 3 and just try to squeeze the win by turn 6 or 7. Hulk probably will drop a Psychatog early and could easily win by those turns, if not earlier. Keep in mind that discarding a full hand (of eight) gives the Tog +12/+12, which makes into a very imposing monster. Cunning Wish for a Berserk can easily make it lethal, and very early on. Also there's the more unusual damage bonus spells:

Gush
Target Psychatog gains +6.5/+6.5 until end of turn.

Ancestral Recall
Target Psychatog gains +5/+5 until end of turn.

Fact or Fiction
Target Psychatog gains +6/+6 until end of turn.

This costs zero, one and four mana respectively. And to top it all off, the Tog can easily drop the Morphling out of the sky. Incidentally, if you believe it, after suffering a lot of pain from Birds of Paradise, Parfait's Pegasi Tokens and other random fliers, I put a Silklash Spider in my sideboard, which, as it turns out, is a mean thing to do to a Morphling, since it utterly shuts it down. It's not something anyone sensible would do, but it's there in case you were wondering.

Claim Number 3.5: Duress
I am not sure who is responsible for including this gem into the Hulk deck. It might be the dominance of combo decks in the current environment, and the decline of aggro decks, with the exception of TnT and the ever-present Sligh/Goblins. Everyone speaks so highly of the great Red Elemental Blast, and how for one Red mana, you can exchange it for any Blue card you can possibly think of.

Although Duress cannot send a Psychatog to the graveyard (though if you look at the previous three cards I displayed in Claim Number Three, it can force a player to discard those before the lethal turn), I do believe Duress is the since one-mana card (other than Ancestral Recall) that raises the bar for all other one-mana cards.

Duress is fantastic for and against Hulk. Duress is usable against such a variety of decks, and Hulk can draw so many cards (again, Claim Numero Uno) that the one-for-one exchange is more than favorable, and it can usually nail whatever threat the opponent has in hand (be it Ancestral, Survival of the Fittest, Yawgmoth's Will, the Worldgorger Dragon's toys, or whatever combo part currently bothers you).

Duress cannot get creatures or land, but there are very few of either that bother the Tog. Royal Assassin-type creatures are always dangerous if they live, but, either they are small (like the Assassin himself), and thus vulnerable to Fire/Ice, or they are big (like Visara the Dreadful or Avatar of Woe), and cost too much to be a factor.

As for land, recently, I saw Maze of Ith being a pain to deal with, especially in multiples. Here, Fire/Ice comes in to tap them before the Psychatog attacks. As for the dangerous Library of Alexandria, it's simply not an issue, since you will outdraw them (and you carry a Library yourself, so it's even). I can't think of any instant land destruction you can fetch with Cunning Wish, but trust me, it's not a bother. Nor is Strip Mine, as you will outdraw whoever throws that at you (Claim Number One again).

Another side effect of Duress is that you get to see your opponent's hand. This can help planning out for the future. In an environment where every turn is crucial, you need to plan out the next few turns. Imagine chess, or the game of Go, where the players need to think a few moves ahead. Since the game is entirely revealed, this is very possible. Some strong players can see about ten moves ahead, but someone like Gary Kasparov can probably see twice as many.

This sort of advantage is the reason Kasparov is a Grand Master. He can imagine this game state, and the next one, and so on, so he can see exactly how each move will affect the game, and how a move that has little current significance can be the deciding step fifteen turns down the road. The opponent can still throw a monkey wrench in your plans by mentally exhausting you, such as taking a less than optimal move and forcing you to rethink all the states one more time, but often, the calculations are too complex for most to contemplate. Incidentally, a good Chess player can think three or four moves ahead and still have a huge advantage, and not overstrain the brain.

Obviously, since Magic is not entirely revealed, this is not possible. Often, you can guess what the opponent is playing by his first land drop, or the first few cards played, but Duress shows you exactly what they can do. At this point, you can think three of four moves ahead, maybe by computing the percentages of cards that he could draw. Since the first turns are the most crucial ones, and Hulk can win by turn 4 or 5, Duress has cemented its place in the deck, and in a lot of other decks that can afford to stick three or four in.

Okay, that's enough claim-age. What else is there in the deck? I don't think I need to reiterate all that has been said about Carl's deck, but here's the cards that I haven't yet talked about: Counterspells, Cunning Wish, and the sideboard. Let's briefly analyze each.

4 Mana Drain
4 Force of Will

Any serious Blue deck relies on those eight cards. I cannot imagine the last time that a blue-main deck didn't run four of each, and with good reason. Force of Will is the key to stopping broken plays that happen before you can lay down a land, and Mana Drain is just a really good counterspell that always gets a lot of mileage. Mana Draining something second or third turn allows you to set up victory, with Accumulated Knowledge off Intuition, a Fact or Fiction, Deep Analysis and other, similar effects. Of course, Keeper has them as well, but Hulk draws them a lot more often.

Briefly, in the sideboard, it runs four Elemental Blasts (Three Red, One Blue), which can double as anti-Sligh, or anti-control cards.

3 Cunning Wish

This is such a central card in the deck. It can be almost unfathomable to run Hulk without it (remember, it lives off the sideboard). It fetches the Berserk, of course, which serves as the final part of the kill procedure, but it can fetch any of the silver bullets that Keeper has to run maindecked. Of course, Keeper adapted and included Cunning Wish itself, but it feels more natural in Hulk. I think the four key cards are Lim-Dul's Vault (to scan through your library if desperate, especially for Yawgmoth's Will or Intuition), Artifact Mutation and Naturalize for the annoying enchantments and artifacts, and, of course, the Berserk.

3x Coffin Purge (Sideboard)

I believe this was a metagame choice which Carl nailed on the head. Dragon, and to a lesser extent, TnT and other Survival/Reanimator decks could, and did, play a big part in the tournament. I am not sure if the future will warrant three, but the decision was done, and it was right.

As for two Pernicious Deed and one Mind Twist, I find it amazing that those were run in the sideboard and not main deck, but apparently, the creators know more than I do. They are both really good cards that can help against all but the speediest combo decks (hmm, maybe that is why they are not main decked).

At this point, there are two more questions which need to be discussed. First, how does the deck stack against some of the other decks in the field? It is simply not enough to say that Hulk is better than Keeper because it beats it consistently. That explanation would be fine for an aggro deck, but fails miserably against control. Let me explain this in a more concrete way.

Take the top aggro deck at the moment, be it I@n'sVintage Goblin-burn deck or TnT. They do one thing: deal twenty damage. Obviously, in order to be successful, they need to do it very fast, which they accomplish. However, that is the extent of what they can do (despite TnT carrying stuff like Elvish Lyrist (which is more of a control card), although it's an aggro staple against Moat). If you have a new aggro deck and if it can deal twenty damage faster than those two, you can generally safely say that it is the top in the field.

For control, this doesn't hold. For example, let Deck A is the top deck at the moment, consistently being able to beat decks B-Y. Deck Z is the new control deck on the scene, and it enjoys a 75% victory ratio against deck A. However, the match-ups against the other decks are not quite as favorable, in fact, it loses up to 50% against some all the other decks (hypothetically). Today, it is simply not enough to be able to beat one deck. The top control deck, the most coveted spot in Type 1, needs to be able to face everything better than any other deck. Think of a line from the movie Dangerous Minds:"It is very easy for someone to get an 'A' in school. It is a lot harder to keep it." It is impossible to analyze the match-ups against every possible deck out there, so I have to concentrate what seem to be the two most dangerous decks at the moment: Welder-MUD and Long.dec.

Long.dec is quite probably the scariest deck out there. Essentially, the deck gold-fishes against you, working around the few cards that can stop it, plays a lot of spells very early on, and wins within the first two turns in most games. Obviously, if Long.dec goes first, then all you can do is play Force of Will to stop the key card (sadly, it is usually the Black Lotus). Sometimes, this doesn't work, but that's all you can really do.

However, after you lay down a land (and possibly one or two mana accelerators), the situation changes drastically. Hulk has two fantastic cards that can be played for one mana, and they both can be crucial: Duress and Brainstorm/Ancestral Recall (well that's three cards, but the last two serve the same function, really).

Duress, as discussed before, can trade for the key card in their hand. Usually, it's either Yawgmoth's Will, the Lotus, or a tutor card, (in that order), or maybe even the Draw-Sevens that are so integral in the engine. Brainstorm and the Ancestral add three cards to your hand that can increase the chance to get a Force of Will. In some lucky games, you will have both Blue and Black mana available, and both Duress and a Draw-Three. Of course, you cannot rely on that, but both the Duress and Brainstorm make Hulk much better prepared to deal with Long.dec.

This will become very apparent in the next few months (momentarily ignoring Mirrodin). Keeper simply doesn't have as many answers to the threats, and as Stephen said, Long.dec puts out too much pressure to simply be reactive. It will not work. After you have weathered the original storm, Hulk can easily auto-pilot for a couple of turns and drop the Psychatog for the win. Stephen said that his deck is good at top decking, but Hulk can draw cards like no other. You will be able to deal with anything soon enough.

wMUD (Welder Mud) is a prison deck that features a very nasty (and originally overlooked) card: Sphere of Resistance (incidentally, Sphere could become one of the central Type 1 cards, since it hurts Long.dec). This bears repeating: in such a tight mana environment, where we are all taught of maximizing our plays and make sure to use all our resources at every step, the Sphere of Resistance wrecks havoc on an unprecedented scale.

Furthermore, wMUD features the marvelous Mishra's Workshops, allowing the deck to make a turn 3 play on turn 1, which, as we all know, is pretty good. It follows up with Tangle Wire, which will slow your deck down further, and then will drop the Smokestack/Goblin Welder combination, which will take care of all your permanents. The Sphere of Resistance rarely affects wMUD, as it usually has more mana available, and will deploy all of its threats under that extra protection.

If my insistence of the previous paragraph made one thing clear, it's that the Sphere of Resistance is the key card. It forces the opponent to slow down, and play at wMUD's pace, which, of course given the circumstances, will be almost impossible to break out from. Much like with Long.dec, stopping the Sphere is the primary goal of your deck (unlike Long.dec, here, at least, we have a clear target). Again, like Long.dec, the Sphere has little-to-no disruption preceding it, and generally, no Force of Will to protect it. If you go first, and manage to squeeze a first turn Duress, it becomes clear what you need to take. Or, failing that, use the Draw-Three's (I should market this"Draw-Three" idea) to get a more sturdy hand that will allow you to deal with him casting the Sphere.

Should that hit play (and you have to prepare for it to hit play on the first turn), a very short countdown ensues. You need to counter the Smokestack (you have to deal with the Sphere at some point, and the answer comes in the form of Instants, so Tangle Wire is less of a priority), and then somehow find a way to nuke the Sphere, with the answer coming from your sideboard, in the form of either Naturalize, or (if you have Red and Green), Artifact Mutation (and get two attractive 1/1 tokens to feed Smokestack, should it need feeding). Be careful not to wait too long though. wMUD will progress quickly, dropping Karn, Silver Golem, at which point your mana acceleration is dead, and you will die very quickly. Of course, a second Sphere from the wMUD player will also seal the game.

Again, the important point is that your one-mana spells are the key to stop this from happening. If you Duress away the Sphere, or Force of Will the thing, you will gain a huge advantage with your draw engine. At some point, (which will come around turn 3 or 4), you can safely drop the Psychatog (remember, there is no Instant disruption on their side) and ride it home to victory. Just draw all the cards and attack. Their Triskelions and Goblin Welders aren't exactly well equipped to deal with the massive kill condition that comes their way, and even though Karn is a 0/8 blocker, casting Ice on it will usually take care of that.

A minor point should be made about the wMUD match-up and the claims above. I have shown why Claims One, Three, and Three point Five are important against wMUD, but once Karn starts eating away the moxen, even Number Two is important. A stable mana base can circumvent even that, giving you precious turns in which to respond.

Similar analysis can follow for the other decks in the field, but it will get boring if I do this twenty more times. It usually follows the same pattern: Duress if you can, counter their key spells, and drop a large kill condition, all of it being backed up by a strong drawing engine. However, if you remember, I stated that there are two questions that still need to be addressed, and I shouldn't digress too much. The second question is Mirrodin.

Whenever a new set comes, it is geared towards Type 2, the mass market. However, every once in a while, a few cards slip through the seams that can have a huge impact on Type 1. Scourge showed us this with their Storm cards of Tendrils of Agony and Mind's Desire, as well as the bane of control, Xantid Swarm, the bane of combo, Stifle, and a couple of others. Since Mirrodin has only been legal in Toronto for three weeks, the entire impact cannot be fully understood, but, thanks to the spoilers, we have a few cards that do need a closer look. Oscar did a good job analyzing them in greater detail, but, until the proof of tournament play comes, everyone can volunteer an opinion on their effect.

The primary card, of course, is Chalice of the Void. This artifact has been heralded as the blight of so many decks, as the card that was supposed to balance Type 1, but instead made it a lot more chaotic. [Oddly enough, in the other formats we deem chaos to be"balanced." - Knut] We have seen charts after charts of what decks get totally shut down by it, and even I have been staggered. We were told that it screws up the tight and efficient mana curve of all decks (since all are supposed to have cards in the casting cost range of zero-to-two). Now decks need to have a more erratic curve in order to reduce vulnerability to the Chalice.

One word needs to be said to the entire Type 1 community in fear of the Chalice: Relax!

Scroll a page up, and look at the Sphere of Resistance. What did I say it does? It wrecks the mana base by not allowing decks to perform as optimally as originally intended. See some sort of similarity? Also, scroll up a bit further, when I said that the Sphere was originally ignored, until decks like Stax and wMUD made it a centerpiece. That is the problem with all symmetric cards, and it will persist with the Chalice. wMUD can easily work with and around the Sphere, whereas the Chalice isn't that simple.

Decks carrying it will do so for two reasons, at least as far as I can tell today.

1) As a sideboard against Long.dec, which I believe was the primary designation.

2) If a deck manages to be centered on the Chalice of the Void.

If reason one doesn't apply to you, then don't worry about it. Let people like Stephen, Mike Long, Roland Bode and the rest of the Type 1 pillars worry about it. They are smart enough to build that monster of a deck, they will be smart enough to figure out how to circumvent Chalice. I can offer no pertinent advice to them, and I doubt many would.

The second point is a more serious problem. One of the more unbalanced things they can do is to go first, drop their Moxen and Black Lotus, then play Chalice for x = zero, denying you the chance to play your mana accelerators. This play will be used frequently, and there's little you can do, unless you can cast Force of Will on the Chalice of the Void. However, is this really the worst they can do?

In order to answer that, let's look at the deck best designed to use the Chalice: wMUD. With Mishra's Workshop (and other lands that can produce more than one mana, think City of Traitors in some builds), they can easily drop a first-turn Chalice for one, or, maybe even two in some rare cases. For x = 1, it nullifies your Duress and Draw-3's, as well as the later-game Berserk. Duress is a lot less useful after the first key threat is down, so that's not tragic, and by the late game, you can deal with it long enough to cast Berserk.

For x = 2, it nullifies the Time Walk (big deal), and the Accumulated Knowledge and Merchant Scroll, two integral parts to your drawing engine. This move is like a bullet that gets lodged in your liver. You don't die immediately, but if you don't do something quick, you won't live very long. Usually, you will not be able to do much. Both your artifact destruction spells cost two mana (Naturalize and Artifact Mutation), and they are both in the sideboard. If you do not have a Force of Will in the opening hand, the situation looks dire and lethal. The only bright spot is that they need both the Workshop (or Black Lotus) and the Chalice (or some really bizarre combination of Moxen and Mana Vault), and you only need the Force of Will and a Blue card. The odds are in your favor that you will counter it. Failing that, put a card in your sideboard that destroys artifacts, but doesn't cost two mana (Rack and Ruin, perhaps?).

As for x = 3 (which is even more of a kill against you, since it nullifies the Psychatog and the Cunning Wish), I wouldn't bother. Even wMUD cannot get six mana on turn one (minus, of course the Workshop and the Black Lotus), and have the Chalice in hand. If they do, and you have no Force of Will, well, such is life. By the time they get six mana, you will have some sort of counter ready (even a Mana Drain), and all is well. Mana Draining a six mana card is juicy, you will win just on that.

Furthermore, including the Chalice in the deck might not be the smartest idea. It changes the deck, especially that turn 1 Sphere of Resistance, which, in my opinion, is still a stronger threat. It will be up to the wMUD's fan base to incorporate it properly, and, when they do that, we shall analyze the situation again. Until then, we have to wait, because simply inserting it into the deck is not enough.

As for the other decks that will use Chalice, the symmetrical effect is enough of a problem that you can easily take care of it. They cannot play it as early as the Workshop-based decks, and they have to heavily modify their decks to incorporate it. Incidentally, if you believe the pundits, you can see that you need to set the X to be zero-to-three to completely hose certain decks, which means that their deck needs to be resistant against their own Chalice. Since the field is diverse enough, I doubt this can happen effectively.

My prediction is this being the lazy sideboard card. Are Goblins bothering you? Then how about put this in the sideboard, set it at x = 1, and make your deck not rely on late game one-mana cards. Similar ideas can be put forth for the other numbers. Or just set it at x = 0 against Long.dec. Given Duress and more Draw-3's, Hulk can disable the Chalice faster than Keeper (same argument as against the Sphere, Claim Number 3.5). As the game drags on, Hulk can establish such a dominant position (and fast, Claim Number One) that casting a Chalice will do absolutely nothing but elicit a brief grin.

The other artifact receiving a lot of hype was the Isochron Scepter. People around here were dreaming of being able to use Ancestral to draw obscene amount of cards every turn and Orim's Chant and Abeyance to shut down their opposition. Again, this is what I would call lazy control.

Why is Ancestral so good? On a single Blue mana, you can draw three cards. With the Scepter, it becomes, for four mana, you can draw three cards, and then you can flash it back every other turn for two mana (thus, becoming a better, reusable, Deep Analysis). This is its best-case scenario. Worst-case, you lose two cards (one of them permanently), without getting that much in return. It would be naïve to assume that you can use this indefinitely, at which point, it's a win-more kind of card.

Abeyance is a great idea. But this requires investment in White, which is a problem (unless you play Parfait), since you become overly reliant on the Scepter. You also have to wonder if this is better than using the Abeyance during your deciding kill turn as a surprise, as you then let your opponent find ways to kill the Abeyanced Scepter, and you lose a great defensive card without really using it to a full effect the previous turns.

If Hulk wants to play the Scepter, then the question becomes what to remove it for. My best advice is to use it instead of the Deep Analysis, and imprint with either Accumulated Knowledge or Fire/Ice. I briefly tested this, and it's fun. However, my problem was the lack of serious Hulk mirror-matches, which is the reason why Carl had them in the deck. Take that advice with a grain of salt. After you Intuition for the three Accumulated Knowledge, sticking the third on in the Scepter can easily accomplish the same as the Deep Analysis (if it is not countered). Fire/Ice is such a great card, you can shut down decks better than Chalice of the Void (a bit of a hyperbole there).

What else is there in Mirrodin? People have suggested the Spoils of the Vault to be the new Demonic Consultation, and briefly analyzed, it is very similar in most situation. The trade-off between damage and the top six cards removed seems pretty equal in most circumstances. Off course, the Consultation was used to fetch Necropotence, and in this situation, the Spoils of the Vault fails miserably, since it nibbles away at the most precious resource for the Necropotence: life. However, since the restriction of that Skull, the Demonic Consultation has been relegated to a combo-tutor role, which it fills admirably, and so will the Spoils.

Given the past instances of strong spot tutors, Spoils will probably be restricted, so I wouldn't yet make a big deal out of it. If you are thinking of using it in Hulk, or even Keeper, don't. Hulk draws too many cards to need that, and Keeper is too much of a pile of single cards to make it worthwhile. If you need a Force of Will or Ancestral Recall that desperately, you've already lost.

Icy Manipulator, Bottle Gnomes, and Chrome Mox have little-to-no effect on Hulk. They are all very good and effective cards, but just don't fit in the deck. The mana base of Hulk is good enough to not need the severe card disadvantage of the Chrome Mox, much like it didn't need Mox Diamond. There are a few more interesting cards in this set, and plenty of people have reviewed them all, but I doubt any can have too deep an impact on the Type 1 metagame.

It becomes increasingly more difficult to predict the future, especially with such rapid shifts in the Type 1 world. Besides the top players in the field, there are a lot of dedicated people with brilliant ideas that can turn the tides by using overlooked ideas. If you need any proof, look no further than wMUD, using a host of fairly new cards that were once discarded, to completely modify the way we look at the game.

-Razvan Trufasiu

Razvan on www.themanadrain.com

Toronto, Canada