Five With Flores

Congratulations and condolences to Bill Stark who lost in the Top 8 (finals I think?) of the Magic Cruise PTQ.

Bill played an Affinity deck with four main deck Delay!

Delay is a particularly good card in Affinity due to that deck’s sometimes vulnerability to Ancient Grudge. One Delay should give most Affinity draws more than enough time to just kill the Ancient Grudge packing opponent before the original Grudge resolves, let alone rebuy shenanigans.

Here is Bill’s deck list from Affinity for the Magic Cruise:

4 Seat of the Synod
4 Vault of Whispers
4 Great Furnace
4 Tree of Tales
2 Blinkmoth Nexus

4 Ornithopter
4 Arcbound Worker
4 Arcbound Ravager
4 Frogmite
4 Myr Enforcer
2 Master of Etherium
4 Springleaf Drum
4 Cranial Plating
4 Chromatic Star

4 Thoughtcast
4 Delay

Sideboard:
3 Trickbind
1 Stifle
3 Scrabbling Claws
1 Relic of Progenitus
4 Atog
3 Ancient Grudge

You can read Bill’s report in full on The Starkington Post.

And that, if it makes any sense (doesn’t) is my segue into this video about Bant Aggro-Control in a format with a rising Affinity component:

LOVE
MIKE

This is the second video in anticipation of PT Berlin 2008. The deck in question is Extended Domain Zoo. “Five With Flores: PT Berlin Preview - Domain Zoo” takes us from a brief history of the archetype, to a Magic Online deck editor updating the deck for Shards of Alara, then finally a battle against the other main offensive deck of the format, Ravager Affinity.

The above is another overview video that I am setting up for the Top Decks column on magicthegathering.com later this week.

Enjoy the sneak peek.

LOVE
MIKE

This is the first of a couple of videos we are posting in anticipation of PT Berlin 2008. The subject is Extended Affinity (that is, the best offensive deck of all time according to Osyp Lebedowicz). “Five With Flores: PT Berlin Preview - Extended Affinity” takes us from an archetype overview, to morphing last year’s Top 8 deck to incorporate Atog and Fatal Frenzy, and finally to a quick fight with aggro Rock.
 

 

The above is a basic overview video that I intend to post on my Top Decks column on magicthegathering.com this week (crossing my fingers to get 1-3 more finished for the same column). The idea is to do the usual Top Decks analysis for a pre-Pro Tour Berlin format overview article, but enrich the article with some of the stuff we are doing on Magic video side.

Some people are just visual and I think that showing them how decks actually play, how you can swap out certain Magic cards for other cards to tune and template a deck, and then some actual game play, will be helpful in a different way than just the articles.

As with the Red Deck set we did last week, I opened this one up with a Magic Online deck editor screen, and ran though the changes there… Thanks as usual to Brian David-Marshall for the idea.

So in the unlikely event that you’re reading my blog on 26 October 2008… You get a sneak peek of what I am intending for this week’s column.

LOVE
MIKE