Running The Numbers #3

Running the Numbers #2

Writers Note: If I happen to talk about your deck and you want to clarify something about how it works or its classification, you can email me at davebarone@aol.com and explain. Also, if you want your deck to be discussed then you have to post it in the event thread (note: this doesn't guarantee I'm going to) I can't really talk about a deck if I don't know what's in it.

Tournament Overview:

Event - Classic PDC, 7.02
Format - Classic, Matches

Week two of Season 7 has come and gone and the aggression continues to flow. Perhaps everyone is angry it's getting colder or that school has started up again. For whatever reason, Aggro decks continue to make up the majority of the field in the big Classic Saturday event, but as was the case last week the winner in the end was MUC. 12 different archetypes were represented in the event (including a couple of rogue strategies one of which that did very well) with a total of 16 participants. We also open up a new category of deck this week; Aggro Combo. Not often played, this strategy often employs an Aggro attack with a combo sub theme. It is an interesting surprise strategy that can be difficult to defeat when played well because of its swiss army knife abilities to win. For this week the decks break down into:

Control - 2: MUC

Aggro - 8: Burn Range, Rites Madness (2), Angel Stompy, RGW Slivers, Gwu Aggro Pump, RB Husk (2)

Midrange (aggro control) - 3: Orzhov Blink, Rock & Millions

Combo - 1: Freed

Aggro Combo - 2: GWB Kami Lock, GW Elves

Top 4 (top 8) Analysis

So, MUC & Angel Stompy (Cloak variant) in the finals again. Nice I could just re-use my opener from last week. I had hoped to see some adjustments in decks this weeks events towards beating those two, but I really don't think enough efforts are being directed at the decks to beat. Also, I must stress this point. Just because MUC wins the event, doesn't mean that is the only deck you should Metagame against. Angel Stompy has also been doing consistently well and you need to address it as well in your building. The other two decks in the top 4 were RB Husk and GW Elves Aggro Combo. These two decks are newer and new designs respectively and they have looked promising. I will take a closer look at the Elves below, so I won't look at it deeply up here, but I would like to highlight the RB Husk deck right here. (oh, I thought I should mention here in case anyone noticed, I'm not really using peoples names here. I want these to be about the decks and not the players, so I want to focus on the builds instead. I'm not ignoring anyone's credit)

RB Husk
2 Barren Moor
4 Carrion Feeder
2 Forgotten Cave
2 Last Gasp
2 Lava Zombie
2 Lightning Bolt
5 Mountain
3 Nantuko Husk
4 Phyrexian Rager
4 Seal of Fire
7 Swamp
2 Terminate
3 Grim Harvest
2 Inner-Flame Acolyte
4 Keldon Marauders
4 Mogg War Marshal
4 Rakdos Carnarium
2 Stingscourger
2 Terramorphic Expanse

Sideboard
3 Crypt Rats
3 Innocent Blood
2 Ostracize
2 Shred Memory
3 Stinkweed Imp
1 Terminate
1 Terror

I am not the creator, so if the initial designer wants to elaborate on it in the forums, you are always welcome. This deck maximizes Echo and Vanishing effects of its creatures in concert with Carrion Feeder and Nantuko Husk to attack early and often with high power.
In my opinion there are a few rough edges with the numbers, but has a nice low curve and appears to be a strong aggro deck capable of fast wins. My suspicion is that it would have some difficulty with MUC though because of the prevalence of bounce in their deck and with little evasion it may be hard to break through in that match-up. It also may have difficulty with lifegain in general as is found in Cloak. While the are all answerable issues, I will be watching to see if adjustments are made. On the day the deck went 5-4. Of those losses, 2 were to MUC, one was to Angel Stompy.

The Field: Analysis

SSDD. The rest of the field was full of aggro and aggro control decks for the most part. In the rest of the field there were 9 such decks out of 12. While RG Beats showed up 3 times last week, it vanished this week entirely. I wouldn't get used to it though, its never gone. Orzhov showed up twice, but didn't make much noise going 2-3. I think the current builds a still just too slow and need to be more aggressive if they are going to give MUC proper problems. Another deck showing up twice was Rites Madness. This deck uses Last Rites with Madness, Dredge, and Threshold together to gain advantages on opponents not built to handle it. It had a tough day going 1-4. Maybe its not the right time for this one. Finally, we saw a blip of Burn Range on the radar. Burn Range is very strong. there is no question and with Bolt around now it can kill very fast, I would think from looking at it from the outside that the real problem would be dealing with Cloak and not as much MUC. I would consider this still one of the top three even though we haven't seen it for a few weeks. I know it is the deck I fear most and always prepare for.

Season Tracking & Head to Heads

I am continuing to track deck records, they will start to be shown in the next couple of weeks.

Innovations, Changes, New Decks

It made me happy to see some creativity this week in the deck lists. As a non-netdecker myself, I always enjoy watching homegrown stuff be successful. One such deck popped this week in the form of GW Elves. Unfortunately I don't have the list yet because he hasn't posted it, but basically I can explain it as a GW aggro deck with elves such as Timberwatch, Ledgewalker, Wirewood Herald. So, it could take a nice fast attacking stance. Then as a 2nd road, it used Runed Stalactite on a Seeker of Skybreak to untap itself over and over. Then, since a "merfolk" is being untapped, with a Judge of Currents in play he would gain infinite life. It was cool to see Lorwyn come into play and I hope it stirs the creative juices for other players out their that haven thought so much about creature type in a while.

Final Thoughts

Again this week a nice number of players. I would like to see it get to 18 so a top 8 would occur, but 16 is really good as well. Also, it seems the 5 round structure of the tournament is really making the cream rise to the top and that is pleasing. Still a lot of aggro, but few able to beat both MUC and Angel Stompy. There's a lesson in there somewhere people.

Hope you enjoyed reading.

Jaknife/Dave