Sunday, January 23, 2011

Extended and RUG

Wow! A new blog post! It's been quite a while since I've even looked at my blog, let alone made a post on it. But thanks to the constant badgering of Kyle Sanchez, I think I'll start posting things regularly on here again. The topic for today is Extended. Ever since the new format was announced I've been extremely excited about the format. I began playing Magic when Lorwyn was released, and started playing competitively around the time Shards of Alara was released, so this Extended format is like a "Greatest Hits" of my Magic playing career. I've been spending a lot of time on MTGO trying to grind out the format and find a deck that really suits me well. I started with RG Scapeshift (being almost a direct port from Standard Valakut so no new cards needed to be purchased other than Scapeshift). The deck did well for me but I wanted something more. This format is wide open and so many strategies are viable so I wanted to keep trying new things. When the Wargate deck started getting big, I purchased Omens and Cryptics and started playing that, but had pretty dismal results. I then moved to GW Trap, and then GW Little Kid, Aggro Scapeshift, and even the RUG Pestermite deck that Top 8'd a PTQ. Nothing satisfied what I wanted to do in this format. I even toyed around with Reveillark decks (Lark being my favorite card ever printed). Finally, with the MTGO PTQ looming nearer and nearer, I noticed Craig Wescoe playing a RUG Control deck that was very similar to the ones seeing play in Standard. Some research and tweaking and I ended up with this list:



At the time of this writing I am a dismal 4-3 in the MTGO PTQ with this exact list. All 3 of my losses came from RG Scapeshift, which happens to be a horrible matchup. Other than Scapeshift, this deck is extremely well positioned in the Extended metagame. The deck has access to some of the most powerful spells in the format and can gain card advantage in all sorts of ways. Against aggro you have a plethora of removal to hold them off early and force the late game where you take over with Titans and Jace. Against control you have plenty of fast beaters to wither away their life total while still having access to Cryptic and Jace to keep them from stabilizing. The Spreading Seas package is great in Extended right now because so many decks are reliant on non basic lands and Seas can put a hurt on some of the 3+ color decks that are popular at the moment. Seas can also deal with Valakuts, making them harmless islands, unable to deal you any damage.

Though my results at the PTQ dont show it, I believe RUG is a great contender for this new Extended format. It has plenty of tools to attack the format from many different angles, and there is a lot of room to make changes and adapt the deck to whatever challenges evolve from this wide open format. Give the deck a try and feel free to comment or ask questions either on here on on Twitter (follow me @dcampa93)

No comments:

Post a Comment