Innustrad's Destiny

For the past few months, I'd pretty much dropped the idea of brewing casual stuff, instead focusing on more serious content for the site. Well now, that's about to change, and you're still probably gonna steal some games. It was foretold in the heart of the cards, man. This is your destiny.

It's your destiny to get 2-for-1d with this card.

Deck Tech - Splinter Twin

Nothing says Lorwyn block quite like a
creature combo that wins as early as T3.
Quillspike, anyone?

For those of you who don't know, this has been a combo in Extended for a long time now between Pestermite and Splinter Twin, a combo that also works with Pestermite and Kiki-Jiki, Mirror Breaker.  Basically, a Pestermite enchanted with Splinter Twin taps to create a 2/1 with flying and haste.  When the token enters the battlefield, his trigger untapsthe enchanted Pestermite (or Kiki-Jiki).  In this way, you can create an infinite number of creatures and swing for lethal damage on T4, T3 with acceleration.

In standard, another Pensermite is about to be printed and the combo shall live again.  There's been a lot of talk of just what shell the deck will fit into, so I'm here today to share my views on how to get to that magical Christmas land.  And boy, is my sack full of presents for you!

October Deck Day: Mono-white Equipment

Insert WoW reference here.

A local player was looking for some advice last FNM on a mono-white equipment-focused deck post-rotation.  He showed me his list, which had questionable cards like Sunspear Shikari and Brass Squire with little to no disruption to back him up.  I told him that not only would I work on a lost for him, I'd type up a full article on it.  Now, this will probably be full of inaccuracies, since M12 and Innustrad will both be legal sets after the rotation period, meaning that I'm basically building a block deck with some obvious core set reprints thrown in.  Oh well.

HDC 002: College Pool Party

Last week, one submission for the HDC caught my eye that I really wanted to talk about, especially because this deck is extremely fun to play.  I've tested a little with it already for Manaleak's budget contest a few weeks back and, although I didn't take it far, there was definitely some cool interactions.

Anthony E. says-

 "For your horrible deck challenge, I wish to submit a deck built around Knowledge pool. It must win by stealing it's opponents cards rather than running good ones itself."

Racialist Bloodchiefs: The Return

I was very surprised by the reactions that people had to the HDC list I posted earlier this week.  The deck was a jank combo that tried to win by getting bloodchief online with a Decimator Web and then mill for lethal damage.  And what happened?  People took it seriously.  I had gotten asked for playtesting results, various choices I had made in the deckbuilding process, what I would do for a sideboard in the tournament meta, etc. etc.  It seems that there's actually a market for a deck along these lines and it quickly became one of my more frequently viewed articles, so I began thinking about how I would actually build it.

HDC 001: UB Bloodchief

The challenge: "I want you to build a deck in which no card has a converted mana cost greater than four.  The deck must run Jace Beleren, not JtMS, and win off of Jace's ultimate ability.  With the exception of Trinket Mage, you may not run creatures which do not have an ability that mills the opponent."

Thinking about: Hellcarver Demon

Now, this guy has seen casual play in non-standard formats for the ability to combo off with Doomsday.  However, he has absolutely no use in competitive play due to the fact that he's extremely vulnerable to removal of any non-Terror kind.  If you manage to resolve him and successfully damage your opponent in a deck thinned out by combo pieces, you should have easily been able to beat them with any other deck.  However, something funny has been recently brought to my attention and I can see a deck with it doing well at FNM on occasion.