Five With Flores

Two updated Extended decks, plus about eight matches of additional Extended testing. Enjoy!

I started out playing the Mono-White Control deck from last night again. For those of you who got the wrong deck list looking at it (which is everyone… it wasn’t even sixty cards*), here is the proper deck list:

3 Chalice of the Void

4 Akroma’s Vengeance
2 Crovax, Ascendent Hero
2 Decree of Justice
4 Eternal Dragon
4 Mana Tithe
4 Martyr of Sands
3 Oblivion Ring
4 Proclamation of Rebirth
4 Wrath of God 

20 Snow-Covered Plains
4 Temple of the False God
2 Urza’s Factory

sb:
1 Chalice of the Void
4 Unmake
1 Crovax, Ascendent Hero
4 Kataki, War’s Wage
4 Condemn
1 Boseiju, Who Shelters All

Urza’s Factory is new, obviously. I have to admit I didn’t actually produce any tokens with those tonight… But I’m sure something like those might come up someday… And the deck doesn’t need 22 Plains.

I also swapped in the fourth Kataki, War’s Wage over the solo Ethersworn Canonist; the deck is super good against Affinity already, but the Time Walk aspect against Lightning Bolt Red has just been so good. Plus, it gives you a body that they almost have to answer, which doubles up as life gain, kind of.

Mono-White testing was pretty unspectacular tonight. I broke even in four matches. Ironically the first three were against various Lightning Bolt Red… a nigh bye.

I lost the first match L-W-L… I randomly Condemned a Mogg Fanatic in Game three not realizing his Morph was, um, not a Gathan Raiders. I was planning to kind of ignore it and jump around with chumps and whatnot, but it was a Blistering Firecat! Then he paid retail for another one and I took a million… I really wish I had not blown that Condemn.

I played against the same player later, and played around his Morphs and easily won.

Next match was against another Lightning Bolt Red; Game One he ripped a second Sulfuric Vortex right before I found my first Martyr of Ashes and he got me for just enough, even though I actually had two Eternal Dragons and the Martyr on board. Only Flames of the Blood Hand or Shrapnel Blast would have been relevant in that spot (I had the Proclamation). Game Two I drew four spells, eleven lands. Shrug. I was able to fight off two Sulfurics with Oblivion Rings (obviously not profitable) but with almost no spells otherwise, I couldn’t race or gain life effectively.

The last match was against a kind of poor Black deck… So 2-2 almost doesn’t even count.

In the interim I worked on a Beasts deck. Michael Le (won with my Beasts two Extended PTQ seasons ago) told me to work on it, pointing out Mutavault + Contested Cliffs is a combo against a 1/1… But I realized the strategy is probably not good enough against the metagame. So I scrapped the Boreal Druids to work on a Mono-Blue deck (that turned into a U/R deck).

I started with the Spire Golem deck I made with Andre Coimbra and ended up with this, which is part way between my deck, Tezzerator, and Gabriel Nassif’s deck:

1 Aether Spellbomb
2 Chalice of the Void
3 Chrome Mox
2 Engineered Explosives
1 Pyrite Spellbomb
2 Umezawa’s Jitte
2 Vedalken Shackles

4 Cryptic Command
2 Glen Elendra Archmage
4 Spell Snare
4 Spellstutter Sprite
4 Thirst for Knowledge
4 Trinket Mage
2 Venser, Shaper Savant

2 Academy Ruins
4 Cascade Bluffs
3 Flooded Strand
6 Island
1 Great Furnace
3 Polluted Delta
3 Riptide Laboratory
1 Seat of the Synod
1 Steam Vents

sb:
1 Engineered Explosives
1 Relic of Progenitus
1 Tormod’s Crypt
4 Ancestral Vision
4 Hurkyl’s Recall
4 Firespout

Fairly easy 3-1 (should have been 4-0).

I beat regular Faeries, earning a quick concession in Game Two after showing a couple of Ancestral Visions (Osyp mentioned sideboarding these to me).

After that the Tournament Practice metagame switched from Red Decks to Rock decks. I beat The Rock / Death Cloud and Storm combo; got crushed by Slide. I actually shouldn’t have lost to the Slide deck. He gave me a wide open turn by not flipping his Exalted Angel that I had bounced three times, but then he played a second Angel and there was no way to get around both with my Trinket Mage, Riptide Laboratory, and choice of Spellbombs (I was at one). Game Two I mulled to four and saw a total of two lands in the four hands I looked at and bowed out.

The Rock deck was another super easy victory thanks to siding in Ancestral Visions. The Rock works so hard to get an advantage with Raven’s Crime and so on and I just managed time and drew a bunch, then started dancing around his Worm Harvests with Relic of Progenitus and Tormod’s Crypt. I actually forgot there is a free ability on Relic of Progenitus for about three turns. Embarassing. But I had so many cards it didn’t matter.

Glen Elendra Archmage was pretty good against The Rock.

Storm combo he had such enormous Storm in Game One! He showed his whole hand, made a giant Mind’s Desire, showed so many Goblins that they didn’t fit on the board… I was ready to spoil his fun with the Trinket Mage I had in hand… But he had also ye olde Tendrils. No fun! Games Two and Three I made Chalice of the Void for one about as quickly as I could (Ponder, Rite of Flame, etc.) and just got some light countering going. Ho hum.

This seems like it could be a good deck for a few weeks into the PTQ season, as it seems to have the advantage versus some combo, The Rock, and other Blue decks. Then again the advantage-getting strategies can probably be spliced onto other Blue decks successfully.

I just realize there are 61 cards in the second deck. I’ll fix this if we decide to move forward with the deck list (which, again, seems reasonable for a few weeks into the season).

Happy New Years my friends!

LOVE
MIKE

PS Follow me on Twitter (assuming you have Twitter) at Twitter.com/fivewithflores

* Extra embarrassing in light of the 61 card second deck.

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