Tuesday, November 20, 2012
Deconstruct - RTR Decklists from 11/18/12
15 Mana Creatures? What the..? Before you start to raise an eyebrow, this deck was very powerful most of the time. The deck used the mana creatures to ramp into a Craterhoof Behemoth.and crash in for a ton. Its backup plan is to use Gavony Township to make ramp creatures (and Spirit tokens) into monsters. The biggest innovation to the deck was the addition of Somberwald Sage. The Sage allows you to ramp from 3 mana on turn 2 to 7 mana on turn 3 and then 8 mana on turn 4 allowing a Behemoth to 'Hoof' its way through for large amounts of damage. Brad Nelson, Lukas Jaklovsky, and Martin Juza piloted the deck to a Top 16 birth each (with Juza winning the GP Bochum). The deck has a sideboard plan to go into more of a midrange deck with Thragtusk, Smiter, Restoration Angel, and Angel of Serenity. After this performance, many dealers sold out of Craterhoof Behemoth and the price jumped from about $3-4 to $14.
Another deck that made waves this past weekend was the 5 Color Control deck played by Ali Aintrazi to a Top 16 finish at GP Charleston:
Is that Nicol Bolas and Door to Nothingness in the deck? Those are not typos folks. This is certainly an interesting deck, one that should be looked at closely. One of the issues with the deck is the mana base as you don't have all the shocklands currently so a lot of your mana comes into play tapped. Chromatic Lantern certainly helps the situation thought, as well as Ranger's Path and Farseek but some games you have some very awkward hands.
The deck which had the biggest comeback over the weekend? That would be Zombies, both the BR and BG versions:
Where has this deck been? Well, when Zombies was public enemy #1, everyone meta'd for the deck with Pillar of Flames and Terminus. As the metagame shifted, players started cutting those cards from their decks. With fewer of those cards in players decks, it became safe for Zombies to return to the metagame. One of the reason that BG Zombie deck was successful in Seattle was it has a very favorable matchup vs on of the new archetypes, UW Flash.
So BR Zombies still exist apparently and in big numbers. Some were creature heavy, like the one above piloted by Tomas Vanek at GP Bochum. Others were more burn heavy with Bump in the Night, Searing Spear and Brimstone Volley. Either way, it may be time to put your Zombie meta on standby.
Mono Red has been knocking on the door several times but hadn't cracked the Top 8 until this past weekend. The deck sorta morphed a bit bigger with Thundermaw Hellkite and has access to Hellion Crucible too for when games go long to have staying power. A key reason that the deck has done well has been the rise in GW and WU aggro making Stromkirk Noble much better as well as Pyreheart Wolf which allows your creatures to get through a singleton Thragtusk without him being able to block on his lonesome.
Until next time, keep reading, keep grinding, keep winning
@YawgmothsWill
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