One of the downsides of any PTQ season is the mixed bag of my strong interest in a specific format at that time, and my unwillingness to write about what I’m actually thinking about for the format, as I’d like to retain whatever edge my customization brings until I go to an actual event. There’s no small amount of misplaced ego there, since I clearly can make some very bad deck design decisions, but nonetheless, as long as I’m actually thinking of playing a given build, I’m not all that excited about talking about it.
Also, I’m in a bit of design limbo now anyway, as the first PTQ in my area comes after Conflux releases, so that may completely alter my deck choice via expanded design options.
Switching gears, then, we can take a look at what’s been doing well so far. Obviously, my GP Trial experience was a fascinating mix of moderately expected decks, going Affinity, Dredge, Hulk, Burn, Tron. No Zoo or Faeries there.
Deckcheck has started posting top eights from various PTQs. First, we have the top eight from this last weekend’s PTQ in Louisville, which saw a mono-white deck take the win. If you’ve been reading Flores’ new blog, you’ve seen a similar deck. Likewise if you’ve been reading the Lumbering Justice thread on the Wizards forums. The variant played by Scott Honigmann features a single Mistveil Plains so that you can’t be decked to death after your life total is insurmountable, as well as two Sacred Foundries to support sideboard Boils for the mono-blue matchup. Elsewhere in the top eight, Dennis Taylor brought a burn deck with three maindecked Sulfuric Vortexes (Vortices?), which is similar to the burn deck I ran up against at the GP Trial that had all four in the main. Michael Belfatto’s Affinity ran triple Shrapnel Blast and a pair of Tarmogoyfs, which is kind of interesting.
Over in Kruft, the top eight saw four Faeries decks, with Raul Porojan (a name you’ll recognize if you listen to Rich Hagon’s podcasts) taking the top spot. Although they weren’t all exact copies, nothing stood out to me in the various Faeries builds as particularly exciting (although it’s worth noting that Raul was packing triple Relic of Progenitus in the sideboard as graveyard hate). Notable among the other decks were Sebastian Knorr’s Dredge and Xavier Paulis’s Bant Aggro. The Dredge deck is packing an exciting new enabler (and not coincidentally, random kill condition against Elves and Storm) in Brain Freeze. Consider the fun play of land, Chrome Mox, Brain Freeze yourself to ditch six cards on turn one. Not bad. The added ability to just hold the Freeze in hand and randomly kill an Elves player is gravy. The Paulis Bant Aggro deck is a pretty straightforward aggro-tempo build with undercosted creatures equipped with Jittes and backed by cheap countermagic. Seems good.
Looking through these early lists, I’m most excited by the Brain Freeze in the Dredge deck; I love that dual purposing of the card as both strategy enabler and random kill.
