U/w Banefire - Ideas for the new Extended



Lorwyn, extended Grandaddy



In accordance with the Wizards policy change back before PT Amsterdam, as of the Scars of Mirrodin the extended format will rotate to include only 4 years of sets. Whatever your thoughts on the merits of this change are, one thing is sure: there are a LOT less cards in extended. Pro Tour Amsterdam brought us the welcome news that White Weenie decks can actually win high profile events and confirmed what we suspected about Doran being a complete house. That format included everything from Time Spiral Block onwards. Our new format, with the rotation in of Scars of Mirrodin block and rotation out of TSP block changes a few things. Here are the legal sets as of today:

•Lorwyn •Morningtide •Shadowmoor •Eventide

•Shards of Alara •Conflux •Alara Reborn

•Magic 2010

•Zendikar •Worldwake •Rise of the Eldrazi

•Magic 2011

•Scars of Mirrodin



Bye bye baby!

 Now, whenever a block rotates out of a format, there's always a huge cry about what we're losing from that block that will change everything. The two finalists, Brad Nelson & Paul Rietzl, were playing Doran and WW respectively. Of those two decks, the total list of cards from TSP block that will not be present in the "newer" extended are:

4 Tarmagoyf
2 Slaughter Pact
2 Mana Tithe
4 Flagstones of Trokair

Kai Budde (WW), Brian Kibler (Doran), Thomas Ma (Jund) are similiarly unaffected though Ma loses Grove of the Burnwillows and Marijn Lybaert 's deck only loses 4x Lord of Atlantis. In fact, the only two decks in the top 8 that curse the rotation were Guillaume Wafo-Tapa & Michael Jacob's Mystical Teachings control decks that lose a slew of silver bullets as well as the namesake Teachings. Have a look at the list of top decks and you'd be hard-pressed to find many that lost more than 3 cards outside of obvious losers like Teachings. Sure, everyone's going to feel the pinch of Tarmogoyf rotating out and Guillaume will be sad not to be able to play Teachings in extended (again) next season, but, while there's a new rotation, there's more a feeling of adjustment than having new gaping holes in the metagame. I suspect that the Lorwyn/Shadowmoor rotation will be felt a lot more keenly but that's a problem for next year.

Never imagined you'd be trading for these, eh?


What's probably most important is what didn't rotate out due to Shadowmoor sticking around another season and that's Pili-Pala. I know, you're stunned too that it didn't get the insta-ban that Sword of the Meek and Dark Depths did when the format rotated coming into Amsterdam. I mean, if Dark Depths is a turn 2 or 3, 20/20 flying, indestructible Legend, who cares about infinite mana on turn 3, right?

What the hell am I talking about!! Scars of Mirrodin has given us a card that allows us, with the help of Pili-Pala, to have infinite mana of any colour or mix of colours on turn 3 in the new extended. I'm sure that, if you tried extra hard, you could get it on turn 2, but I suspect that the hoops you'd need to jump through and the subsequent instability of your deck basically precludes any version of this deck from aggressively seeking to combo out on turn 2. And it's all down to Pili-Pala. Here's a tip for next year's extended season: Kill Pili-Pala on sight, it's a fragile 1/1 after all.

What's the SOM card that allows such potential degenerecy in new Extended? Grand Architect.



Feeling Blue

Grand Architect is a "blue creature" lord, a boosting ability that only exists for the colour blue (rather than for a blue based creature-type like Merfolk) on 4 other cards, the four hybrid "Liege" cards that contain blue. It has an activated ability that grants "blue" to lord something non-blue for the cost of 1 blue mana. However, it's the final ability that captures our attention:

Tap an untapped blue creature you control: Add 2 to your mana pool. Spend this mana only to cast artifact spells or activate abilities of artifacts

Grand Architect gives us Workshop mana. This ability is an activated ability which taps a blue creature as a cost, it doesn't require the blue creature to be able to tap itself so it will work on a creature that's summoning sick. The ability to turn a non-blue creature blue essentially allows you to "turn on" any creature or, in other terms, turn {U} into {2}. As the Grand Architect himself is a blue creature, you can pay {1UU} and get {2} back immediatly

This is very important in the case of Pili-Pala as it would otherwise be unable to tap for {2}. The {Q} ability is essentially the {Tap} ability in reverse and the usual rules apply with regards to summoning sickness. The first turn it's in play, it's essentially just a 1/1 or, at best, a "{U->2}" target for the Grand Architect. Once it's no longer summoning sick and has become blue through the Grand Architect's ability, it can tap for {2} and use it's {Q} ability to untap itsself for a mana of the colour of your choice. Now you have your infinite mana combo: once the Pili-Pala is untapped, you can repeat the process infinite times or until you are disrupted.

From this, 2 questions arise:
1.) How can I get this into play quickly enough to be relevant?
2.) What do I do with all that mana?

1.) How can I get this into play quickly enough to be relevant? We need to have relevant blue creatures and artifacts: we're looking to use one to play the other. Something like Cursecatcher is worth a look at 1cc for both accelleration with the Architect and protection for your Pili-Pala / Architect combo. Something that's both an artifact and blue is Etherium Sculptor. He obviously interacts well with Grand Architect, both creating mana from the ability and being castable off mana generated from the ability. In addition, he allows for some quite stupid plays by reducing the cost of your artifacts by one, essentially reading: "Tap: Add 3. Spend this only on artifact spells." This, in turn, fuels larger Everflowing Chalices and any potential high-end artifact finishers you choose to run. Here's a rough sketch of what this deck could look like: 

Artifacts:
4 Mox Opal

4 Everflowing Chalice
4 Springleaf Drum

Creatures:
4 Cursecatcher
4 Pili-Pala
4 Etherium Sculptor
4 Trinket Mage
4 Grand Architect

Other: (6)
X Wurmcoil Engine
Y Inkwell Leviathan
Z Things to get with Trinket Mage apart from Opal/Chalice/Drum

Land:
22 Islands

Now, that's just a 2 minute sketch-up using the possiblity of a turn 3 Inkwell Leviathan or Wurmcoil Engine as your goal. Looking at the turn breakdown, it could run something like:

Hand #1
Turn 1: Island, Springleaf Drum
Turn 2: Island, Etherium Sculptor, Pili-Pala
Turn 3: Island, Grand Architect, get U from the Sculptor off the Drum, turn on the Pili-Pala and gain infinite mana.

Or equally:

Hand #2
Turn 1: Island, Cursecatcher

Turn 2: Island, Etherium Sculptor, Springleaf Drum/Chalice at 0, Mox Opal, Pili-Pala*
Turn 3: Island, Grand Architect**

*Obviously not a perfect play and it's a very specific hand, though the Cursecatcher essentially wins you a turn to smooth out the draw or forces your opponent to spend a spell to kill your Sculptor or the Cursecatcher itself.
** The obvious downside of your turn two in Hand #2 is that your hand is now empty if you are on the play or contains only a single card on the draw. It's possible that you can run your turn 3 here without the Island and still go infinite giving you a potential maximum of 2 cards in hand on the draw. Hand #1 allows for 2 remaining cards in your hand on the play and 3 cards on the draw.

Both hands give the potential for your endgame play of Inkwell Leviathan or Wurmcoil Engine on turn 3 should you have one in hand.

2.) What do I do with all that mana? I mean, are we really going to just settle for Leviathans and Wurmcoils when we can produce infinite mana? There are a lot of X spells remaining in the format and two in particular are very exciting for us:

If the remaining card in hand when we go infinite is Mind Spring, we can draw our deck (counting carefully of course!), find our copy of Banefire (or Comet Storm) and deal infinite damage. Don't forget that the Pili-Pala produces mana of any colour so you can choose to add some R in your infinite mana. This seems like a strategy much less likely to get disrupted and we can cheat down on finisher spells by replacing them with Mind Springs to work some redundancy or protection into our decklist. Let's face it, someone is going to kill our Pili-Palas, Etherium Sculptors and Grand Architects at some point and we're going to want them back. It seems logical to include cards that can recycle artifacts and creatures with low power from our graveyards back into our hand or into play. I'm thinking mainly about Reveillark and Sanctum Gargoyle here.

A nice interaction between these two is that Reveillark can recur the Gargoyle. It's entirely possible that your opponent will run disruption for your early plays yet be unable to handle Reveillark bringing back Gargoyle and another creature, e.g.: an Architect, and have a third artifact (a Pili-Pala, Drum, Mox or Sculptor) come back to your hand. The focus of the deck when adding both red, for Banefire, and white, for Reveillark and Sanctum Gargoyle, must be stability & potential all throughout the game while keeping the ability to just go infinite on turn 3 intact. Another potential all-star blue creature that also interacts with artifacts is Riddlesmith. I'm still cooking the numbers with him but he's a sop to the almost complete absence of any card drawing and his potential to mix in nicely with both Reveillark's and Sanctum Gargoyle's abilities. Here's what I'm looking at:

Land:

1 Mountain
2 Plains
8 Islands
4 Scalding Tarn
3 Arid Mesa
2 Seachrome Coast
2 Glacial Fortress

Artifacts:
3 Mox Opal
3 Springleaf Drum
3 Everflowing Chalice

Arifact Creatures:
4 Pili-Pala
4 Etherium Sculptor
2 Sanctum Gargoyle

Creatures:
3 Cursecatcher
2 Riddlesmith
3 Trinket Mage
4 Grand Architect
3 Reveillark

Spells:
3 Mind Spring
1 Banefire

The sideboard remains open to transform into a more aggressive strategy with Master of Etherium and Lodestone Golem while still being flexible enough to add some silver bullets for Trinket Mage to find. I'm thinking of Pithing Needle, Brittle Effigy, Chimeric Mass or similiar.

Feel free to totally rip this list and test it yourself. I'd be interested in hearing what changes and ideas you can come up with before serious testing starts.