The quirkiness of Shota Yasooka

Shota Yasooka made it to thirty-fifth place this week at Pro Tour Austin. You may have heard about the super quirky Gifts deck he ran in the Constructed portion of the PT. If not, well, click on through to the extended entry below where we’ll move back through time and take a look at the often unique decks that Yasooka has brought to premier events over the years.


Pro Tour Austin 2009 – Miren Gifts

17 Creatures:
Eternal Witness
Kitchen Finks
Loxodon Hierarch
Qasali Pridemage
Sakura-Tribe Elder
Tarmogoyf
Yosei, the Morning Star
19 Spells:
Day of Judgment
Engineered Explosives
Gifts Ungiven
Life from the Loam
Makeshift Mannequin
Path to Exile
Pulse of the Fields
Rude Awakening
Wrath of God
24 Land:
Arid Mesa
Emeria, the Sky Ruin
Forest
Ghost Quarter
Godless Shrine
Hallowed Fountain
Island
Marsh Flats
Miren, the Moaning Well
Misty Rainforest
Overgrown Tomb
Plains
Temple Garden
15 Sideboard:
Condemn
Cranial Extraction
Duress
Engineered Explosives
Ghost Quarter
Ravenous Trap
Thoughtseize
Tormod’s Crypt

Starting with a four-color Gifts frame, Yasooka here adds in a fascinating potential finisher in the form of the Emeria, Yosei, Miren triad (rounded out in a Gifts package, we might imagine, with Life from the Loam). With the deck’s lands largely being Plains of one form or another, it can actually hit a late game situation where it is recurring Yosei each turn with Emeria, then sacrificing it via Miren to (1) gain a bunch of life and (2) lock the opponent out of their untap step forever.
This deck highlights the value we gain in Extended from having Day of Judgment be a functional Wrath, as you can now run both and Gifts for packages that include Day, Wrath, and Explosives.
Also, check out double Pulse of the Fields. Who expects that?
Pro Tour Honolulu 2009 – Cascade
At Honolulu, Yasooka played a fairly mundane, mostly Jund cascade list. You can find it here.
Pro Tour Kyoto 2009 – Faeries
I’m similarly unexcited by Yasooka’s Faeries build from Kyoto, which you can find here.
Pro Tour Berlin 2008 – U/B Tron

3 Creatures:
Sundering Titan
Triskelion
34 Spells:
Chalice of the Void
Chrome Mox
Condescend
Crucible of Worlds
Damnation
Dimir Signet
Engineered Explosives
Gifts Ungiven
Makeshift Mannequin
Mindslaver
Remand
Smother
Thirst for Knowledge
23 Land:
Academy Ruins
Island
Polluted Delta
Swamp
Tolaria West
Urza’s Mine
Urza’s Power Plant
Urza’s Tower
Watery Grave
15 Sideboard:
Damnation
Deathmark
Engineered Explosives
Extirpate
Grim Poppet
Makeshift Mannequin
Persecute
Platinum Angel
Trickbind
Triskelion

Although I’m largely unexcited by Tron builds, this is a pretty solid blue-black take on the archetype – and it’s impressive to see a day two performance with this deck in an environment awash in Elves, as Berlin was.
Pro Tour Hollywood 2008 – Faeries

5 Creatures:
Mistbind Clique
Vendilion Clique
30 Spells:
Ancestral Vision
Bitterblossom
Cryptic Command
Damnation
Mystical Teachings
Pact of Negation
Remove Soul
Rune Snag
Slaughter Pact
Terror
25 Land:
Island
Mutavault
River of Tears
Secluded Glen
Sunken Ruins
Underground River
15 Sideboard:
Bottle Gnomes
Extirpate
Oona, Queen of the Fae
Shriekmaw
Slaughter Pact
Teferi, Mage of Zhalfir
Thoughtseize

At Hollywood, Yasooka ran a Faeries build with a fascinating twist, bringing in two copies of Mystical Teachings. I would imagine this made the deck’s long game significantly better. It also has the advantage of freeing up option space, effectively giving the deck three copies each of Slaughter Pact and Pact of Negation, assuming one was happy to pay 3U for either as a down payment.
GP Krakow 2007 – “Jund” control

14 Creatures:
Masked Admirers
Nath of the Gilt-Leaf
Shriekmaw
Siege-Gang Commander
Tarmogoyf
22 Spells:
Call of the Herd
Damnation
Fertile Ground
Garruk Wildspeaker
Liliana Vess
Mind Stone
Profane Command
24 Land:
Gilt-Leaf Palace
Graven Cairns
Grove of the Burnwillows
Karplusan Forest
Llanowar Wastes
Treetop Village
Urborg, Tomb of Yawgmoth
Urza’s Factory
Vivid Creek
15 Sideboard:
Akroma’s Memorial
Boom // Bust
Extirpate
Liliana Vess
Pyroclasm
Seal of Primordium
Spring Cleaning
Terror

At GP Krakow, the first premier event after the release of Lorwyn, Yasooka brought this deck that pushed the limits of color sanity and ran spells requiring BB, RR, and GG, capitalizing on the availability of decent color fixing to let him play out a series of bombs into an opponent’s face, overpowering them with quality cards in a manner reminiscent of later Five-Color Control Reflecting Pool decks. While not as all-in on the VIvid plan as later players would choose to be, Yasooka nonetheless ran rather more than most were willing to (notably, Manuel Bucher also ran Vivids in his GP Krakow deck).
This deck list was almost certainly transcribed in error, with Vivid Crags replacing those dubious Vivid Creeks.
Pro Tour Charleston 2006 – Control
Charleston was three-player team Ravnica block constructed with unified deck lists. As such, it’s hard for me to really say whether Yasooka’s deck stood out or not. Nonetheless, his team won the event, so you might want to check out his deck list here.
Pro Tour Kobe 2004 – Pristine Angel Control

7 Creatures:
Pristine Angel
Viridian Shaman
28 Spells:
Annul
Damping Matrix
Darksteel Ingot
Oxidize
Pulse of the Fields
Purge
Solar Tide
Terror
Thirst for Knowledge
25 Land:
Forest
Island
Mirrodin’s Core
10× Plains
15 Sideboard:
Hallow
Mindslaver
Pristine Angel
Solar Tide
Solemn Simulacrum
Swamp
Terror
Vex

I’ll end on this deck from Kobe that stands out by being so very different from the other decks that managed to day two this Affinity-flooded PT. We bookend this tour through quirky deck lists with Pulse of the Fields yet again, in a deck that once more plans to win in a manner rather unlike anything else at the tournament.