Well Christmas is coming and I don’t know if that counts as a gift, but before I “offer” one of the best decklist i know in the Original Type II format, here’s some nice news : Brian Weissman does play MtG ! In fact he’s recently started a youtube channel where he showcases some EDH.

So we set up to do our second online tourney, and I’m quite pissed off, as the French post disservice take another crap on me and won’t deliver the last Black Vise I’ve ordered. As a result I can’t play the modestly powerful deck I had planed to play. A bit enraged (they also swindled some not even particularly expansive cards earlier) I say enough is nuff and decide to make the format take a plunge forward. After all, between the “natural” deck I played last time, and the known factor that is Disco-Troll in 93/94, it’s not all that much of a shocking reveal to present that :

In the beginning of my post re-exploration of the format (I played it back then too), maybe one year ago, I quickly identified HtT and strongly black decks as very strong contenders in the format. I also remembered to have forgotten Sedge Troll : back then we just sailed right through without giving it much of a chance, it’s only when it was no longer Type II legal that I realized it was actually not that bad. You’d have to excuse us though : in the beginning of MtG, it was like regeneration was designed as a joke : Swords to Ploshares ? regenerate doesn’t matter, Terror ? ditto, Control Magic ? Wrath of God ? Paralyse, Balance, Icy Manipulator, Maze of Ith, Moat, The Abyss etc.. Really you’d be better off counting the cards that it could resist : basically burn spells (with the exception of Disintegrate) and Nevinyrall’s Disk. It was this last synergy that would spawn what would quickly become the cornerstone of my roster in the format, which in light of our collective initial snub I’ll call the Hymn to Trolls deck (also in honor to the people who have the galls to tell me that Mind Twist is as big a threat as Library of Alexandria in 93/94 -more on that in a forthcoming article..). Every tentative competitive deck would first and foremost be tested, if not designed, against it, and would need to have at least a fair matchup against it to be considered a potentially competitive deck in the format. It’s not that it was dominating in an outrageous fashion like The Deck in 93/94, in fact I found several decks that have a fair matchup with it, and after a lot of efforts I even found some that would best it, it’s just that it has such a robust design that would seemingly make it prepared for almost anything that would be thrown at it, with no gleaming weakness to exploit, that it seemed like its natural place was at the center of the format. Of course all that was just me exploring the format, and with other people’s ideas in the mix the focus could change. Until then I challenge people to defeat (consistently) this deck.

Anyways, I played it in the tourney, and unsurprisingly went 3-0. An interesting match I guess is the one against Bjorn, who with Goblins play one of the deck that can give it troubles. But the lack of optimization of his deck meant he got clear defeats instead. That’s how ruthless the Hymn to Trolls deck is. You can watch some games that I don’t play too there, where you can see that while the online tournament experience surely can’t offer everything that a regular tournament does, those can’t offer the chance to present your baby to your opponent’s mother-in-law (and who could live without that ! :).



Match 1 : vs. Dave Firth Bard

Video (I managed to not record my microphone output unfortunately)

Dave plays an interesting deck that I’ll call Fish and Ships. Using the modern rules Lord of Atlantis is quite the beast considering the average power of creatures in this format, River Merfolk is a good and underrated creature too, as many people play mountains in t2t1st. Ankh of Mishra add their poisonous twist to the game, and I realize I had always underrated that card : on average you’ll get to play your land before your opponent and before playing it, which breaks the symmetrical aspect of the card : the opponent will have to suffer first (by taking 2 or not playing a land). Game 2 he realizes his deck isn’t t2t1st legal as he plays some Boomerang (in a funny combo with the Ankh he boomerangs your land hoping to deal you 2 while slowing you down) we go on anyways. He puts me down to 2 before I can disk his threats and take control. He doesn’t fare too bad : 2-0

Match 2 : vs. Bjørn Einar Bjartnes

Video (.. and I again manage not to record my microphone output !)

Bjorn’s deck is probably something like :

Game 1 he’d probably have won if he didn’t play do-nothings like Goblin War Drums. 3-0 as we play one more game.

Match 3 : vs. Arthur

Arthur plays a Thallid deck. That’s a rather casual deck to face my competitive deck and the result isn’t very pretty, but I do get the audio right 🙂 2-0

Merry Christmas to you all !