Gifts Ungiven

1st place - Charm School (by Dsaporito)

This is generally referred to as "Charmed Zoo" in most places, but "Charm School" seemed like a more entertaining name. This is a pretty high-end Zoo deck that eschews the Grove of the Burnwillows / Punishing Fire interaction in favor of just having some burn, some big creatures, and double Jitte. It's surprisingly straightforward, but I suppose that having eight outs against a resolved Marit Lage gives you a lot of traction against a field rife with Dark Depths decks.

2nd place - Domain Zoo (by twoduckcubed)

This Domain Zoo variant features a number of interesting card choices. The thing that really caught my eye was double Colossal Might in the main deck, which feels like a carry over from Terry Soh's Worlds deck and just might be surprising enough to take some games. In fact, I tend to wonder if they're just sideboarded out of the deck for all game twos and threes, with the idea that your opponent will be playing around them like crazy when they could be doing something proactive instead.

Two copies of Dark Confidant is also an interesting choice, turning the Confidant from a tempo card to a sort of late-game reload card. The sideboard feels pretty erratic, with a single copy of Great Sable Stag and Thought Hemorrhage.

3rd place - Naya Moon (by Trunks10)

Bloodbraids? Blood Moons? Here we go.

I've seen a number of Bloodbraid decks making their way into Extended lately, most often in the form of Scapeshift decks that happen to pack Bloodbraids, rather than Standard-style Bloodbraid aggro. This sucker is pretty much a full-on Naya build that will nearly always power out something useful with Bloodbraid, and complements its Blood Moons with a solid serving of eight basic lands.

Also note the Safe Passage tech in the sideboard, which I imagine is for Scapeshift decks, but might also serve to give you an extra turn to off the opponent in any random matchup.

Finally, check out two copies of my new favorite fun card, Worship. In combination with three copies of Jitte, Worship gives you Zoo opponent some uncomfortable choices for their limited quantity of removal (that is, their Qasali Pridemages).

4th place - Dark Depths Foundry (by wrapter)

Josh was playing Dark Depths at our most recent PTQ, although I don't know if his version had the Thopter Foundry combo built in at the time. I don't have much to say about this -- it's the deck to beat right now, and Josh has a solid example of it here.

5th place - Confidant Rock (by Narling)

A similar G/B deck took down a paper PTQ recently, so perhaps it's not surprising to see a fairly straightforward G/B deck make its way up to the top eight of a PTQ online. If you haven't tested against this kind of deck, you might be surprised at how effective the combination of disruption and aggression actually is. The three main deck Gatekeepers give the deck a surprise out against Marit Lage, and quad Treetop Village means that the deck is likely to serve up a hard-to-kill attacker in every game.

6th place - Dark Depths Foundry (by c0d3x)

More of the best deck, this time with double Vendilion Clique. I haven't tested the different builds enough to know whether Cliques help or hinder.

7th place - White Weenie (by Patrizio Golia)

Patrizio Golia is one of those players I know about from listening to Rich Hagon's podcasts, as he's a regular at European GPs and usually makes it onto Rich's roll call for players of note.

Did you expect to see a white weenie deck top eighting a PTQ? I certainly didn't. Golia's take on the WW archetype is a nice "greatest hits" of many sets -- naturally, what Extended is supposed to be. I only highlight that since other WW decks I've seen recently seem to tend towards being straight ports of Kithkin decks of recent vintage.

That said, I did play against a very similar deck in the fourth round of last weekend's PTQ, although I think my opponent had the Mindcensors in his sideboard.

Golia's build is sort of a smorgasbord of hate wrapped around an aggressive core. We have Mindcensors to screw up Dark Depths, Scapeshift, Thopter Foundry, and those unlucky Gifts players who get hit by the splash. There are also those Soltari Priests in the main, shrugging off Punishing Fire all day long, as well as Samurai of the Pale Curtain (Dredge, Thopter Foundry), and Hokori to generally punish opponents who need mana to function.

I also like the Mana Tithes, since most people won't be looking for a Force Spike out of an aggressive deck.

8th place - Dredge (by ZoochZ)

Hm. Dredge. Can anyone tell me what the Archive Traps are for? Are we trying to luck out and nail the key cards out of decks like Scapeshift and Dark Depths

Overall, I was excited to see this mix of interesting builds and known archetypes in the top eight of what was, presumably, a pretty large event.