Accept one favor from an ouphe, and you’re doomed to accept another.
Its secrets once wrought the greatest artifice ever known. Now crabs loot the rubble to decorate their shells.
“Release that which was never caged.” – Spellbomb inscription
During the collision of the shards, entire ways of life disappeared without a trace.
She remembers every word spoken, from the hero’s oath to the baby’s cry.
Where wasted life cries out to be reborn.
“Before I hire new recruits, I test how long they can hold their breath. You’d be surprised how often that comes up.” – Zahr Gada, Halimar expedition leader
It plucks away memories like choice bits of carrion.
The void is without substance but cuts like steel.
Amidst the darkest ashes grow the strongest seeds.
The wise pay as much attention to what they throw away as to what they keep.
The dark opening seemed to breathe the cold, damp air of the dead earth in a steady rhythm.
Elves believe the hydra-god Progenitus sleeps beneath Naya, feeding on forgotten magics.
“Roil tide! Roil tide! Tie yourselves down!”
“How can we wage war against ourselves? What happens the the kami of our very souls rise against us? I answer simply: We cannot. We die. There can be no victory in this war.” – Sensei Hisoka, letter to Lord Konda
No more shall the righteous cower before evil.
That’s all the flavor text in the Extended deck I played yesterday. Deck list and commentary in the full entry.
Category Archives: Mirrodin-Zendikar Extended
This week’s In Development – Extended strategy and lots of PT pictures
Want some Extended tips? Want to see some Pro Tour photojournalism? Check out this week’s In Development, where I talk about taking on both of the PTQs held last weekend at San Diego, as well as include some pics and a link to my full, two hundred picture photoessay covering the Pro Tour experience.
Something old, something new…
…and we might imagined something borrowed from a friend’s account, and a few blue cards as well. I was checking in on the most recent Extended PTQ online earlier this week, and was pleasantly surprised to see a mix of expected and novel builds in the top eight.
You can check out the top eight and quite a few more decks here. You can also go ahead and click on through to the Extended entry for all the lists in the top eight with some commentary from me.
This week’s In Development – Progenitus and a Bogle
This week’s In Development is up, and it’s all about my Johnny-tastic time at last weekend’s PTQ. Click on over to read about how I ended up losing a tournament but winning at life with the help of a 10/10, a 1/1, and a funky enchantment.
Touch Blink Martyr Lark
1
Check out the top eight decks from last weekend’s PTQ in San Antonio.
Although the invite was taken down by Andres Suares with Domain Zoo featuring Bant Charm, which is a pretty good call, my eye was caught by the second place deck. Ryan Benito nearly made it there with a U/W Touch-Blink deck featuring Reveillark and Martyr of Sands. It’s been a while since there was a last-minute wave of Touch-Blink decks in Standard, so you might want to click through and review those cards and what they do. I’m just fascinated to see such a divergent deck choice make it up to the finals of a PTQ.
In fact, this is a pretty interesting top eight. We have:
1) Andres Suares with Bant Charm Domain Zoo (aka “Charmed Zoo”)
2) Ryan Benito with TBML
3) Chet Steinhagen with Scapeshift
4) James Wise with Jund Dudes
5) Sang Jung with Rubin Zoo
6) Drew Dumanski with BB Naya (where BB is Bloodbraid and Boom // Bust)
7) Hal Brady with Dark Depths
8) Andrew Jones with Affinity
This kind of top eight makes me happy about Extended all over again.
Lotus Omnath TNN!
Have you seen this Worldwake preview card?
Although I don’t think this will end up being super amazing in practice, I found myself suddenly struck by the idea of a Tooth and Nail deck featuring quadruple Lotus Cobra and quadruple Omnath for true mana-building shenanigans.
I suppose if we had a Lotus Cobra on turn two, and (magically) no one killed our dudes, we could see the following:
Turn 3: Play fetchland (G), break fetchland (GG), cast Omnath, tap remaining two lands for net (GG) in pool
Turn 4: Play fetchland (GGG), break fetchland (GGGG), tap all lands (GGGGGGGG)…and be sadly one mana short of Tooth and Nail.
Clearly, it needs more work. 🙂 Still, maybe someone can combine these cards to do something actually useful in a Standard or Block deck.
It’s Gifts week at Channel Fireball (this week’s In Development)
Yesterday, Jonathon Loucks detailed a novel approach to making a Gifts Ungiven deck by deciding on the Gifts packages first, and then assembling the deck around it.
This week’s In Development, cleverly titled Wishing for Gifts, takes a look at my favorite deck, Gifts Ungiven, and the possibilities we can find in a Gifts Ungiven deck with Glittering Wish giving us access to a wishboard.
Valakut, but no Scapeshift (an Extended deck from MTGO)
JWay made it to 16th place in the most recent MTGO PTQ with a Valakut deck that caught my eye by dint of having no copies of Scapeshift.
Click through to the extended entry for the deck list.
PoxStalker (a deck for Mirrodin-Zendikar Extended)
I’m almost certainly going to be playing a Gifts deck in the current PTQ San Juan Extended season, but in thinking about other possible archetypes, I’ve spent some time thinking about Extended porting of either the Team America Legacy deck or the old Standard TarmoRack deck.
I’m not sure if this deck can actually work out against the current Extended metagame, but I’ve gone through several iterations on it and included the most likely one to date in the extended entry.
Click through for deck list and commentary.