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Editor: Audrey C Quan. Thursday 11 December 2003.
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 January Extended
There is only one deck that I've played in Extended now in 6 years that didn't see bannings, but it alas, saw death with the last rotation (oh Prismatic Lace we hardly knew thee, no not joking, Reap/Lace was a fun, fun deck). Free Spell Necro, Sigma{6} (also known as 5-colour-PandaBurst), Turboland, Enchantress, Angry Hermit, and the deck I was really hoping to play this time around, Twiddle Desire. My backup plan for the banning of Tinker was to play Oath, that banning I didn't expect.
There goes plan A, oh, there goes plan B as well, with a helping of the other likely candidate. We all knew it was coming. A few of the cards were a given, but then again some weren't. So this mornings e-mail was a bit of a surprise after all. So what to play? The only other good combo deck in the environment I'd had practice with was Hermit and it's also gone. One strong finisher from New Orleans however remains untouched, Dr. Teeth and the nasty counters of doom, but everyone knows about him. I've catalogued it as the deck I'll probably play and feel seedy about playing. That is unless of course I can dredge something up from my pool of Combos that Couldn't.
Over the past year there have been a few, Combos that Couldn't, but which of them can ascend to tier 1? Even tier 2 would make it plausible since a good meta-game rogue can occasionally hold it's head up, when it's unexpected.
Well enough testing has not been done, but here are a few interesting deck ideas I've been kicking around while bored.
Yep, it's been talked about plenty, there were even a few builds floating around New Orleans. I'm pretty sure it'll give Dr. T, and The Rock a good run for their money, as it has answers for most of their strengths. It might need the mana base readjusted, since you will probably not use the red mana portion of fire while casting from your hand, or the green for Reclamation since they're primarily imprint targets. Besides that, the fourth Chant might be better in main, with other possible sideboard options such as Forbid, Rack and Ruin, Misdirection and a few more Disenchants. But testing against a new gauntlet will be needed to decide this sort of thing, or if the deck stands a chance at all (please note I avoided the pun).
Next, The Pardic Miner lock deck.
Like all reanimator decks this was obviously better with entomb. Admittedly a more standard reanimator approach is probably more consistent, but that sort of thing is for someone with play experience in that area. The lock here is with Tortured Existence (Survival of the Fittest's, really poor cousin), a Squee and a Pardic Miner. Play Pardic Miner sack during opponents upkeep, return by pitching Squee to Tortured Existence, repeat. Your opponent cannot play land, ever. It can play the Miner first turn but in reality your opponent often gets 2 land down before your set up. With Tinker around this of course meant you would be staring down 10 available mana, something you just cant handle. The prevalence of Chrome Mox in the environment may decide the viability of this deck, as it requires the deck to do a lot of extra early work. The worst matchups are red decks with cheap burn spells, yes, that's a big portion of the field your weak against. The Miner has to survive to their upkeep, when they probably have instant speed removal for him with that 1 or 2 mana. Of course you may get lucky going first, and they never get to play a land, but relying on that makes Santa your next door neighbour, with the flying-pig farm 2 houses down. Like all reanimator decks your first and second turn plays can be really brutal. Some tweaking is required :).
The last on the list is a Tinkeresque deck.
Well it's no Tinker. It's really not Tinker. It relies more heavily on the Welder/Mindslaver lock and to be fair, can set it up rather quickly, you know, turn 2. Lower reliability than the Tinker/TinkerStax of New Orleans, but funny never the less.
Well I started out this article intending to offer combo possibilities in the Jan 2004 extended. Instead I ended up with three flavours of accelerated lock deck. What's your lock, Orim's Chant, Pardic Miner or Mindslaver. I might write another article early January, with some details of what happens to these during testing, if people are interested, or maybe just PTQ reports of the 2 I'm intending to attend.
Good luck for those of you who get to play in the December Extended PTQ environment. And maybe I'll see some of you early January.
Tim.
PS Just ask yourself, what would the Iron Chef do?
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