Tier 1 decks
Rising Waters
People keep saying that this deck will fall apart now that port is gone. I really doubt that and see this as the new dominatiant deck of the PTQ's, since it can keep a soft mana lock and can counter with Foil,Thwart, and draw cards off Gush. Plus it can bounce or kill anything in play with Waterfront bouncer and stinging barrier.

Rebel
With the loss of sivvi the rebel chain will be cut of at 4 mana now since anything higher just clutters the deck. Plus now that you can't recur rebels it is damaged way worse by massacre,forecd march, and other spells as such. It's still a tough deck to beat though. The thing that a lot of people argue about is wether to put Mageta,Ramosian Rally,story circle, or extra enchantment removal in the deck though.

B/G natural affinity combo
This deck is the closest to a pure combo deck in the enviroment and can slaughter rebels, and can go 50/50 against anything except LD and the Rising Waters deck. It's up here because it managed to gain Jorael for the deck.

Tier 2
Black control
This is the closest thing to a "pure" control deck in the enviroment. It attains a lot of it's power from 3 cards Massacre,THRASHING WUMPUS, and Ascendent Evincar. A all around good pick. It still can't effectively beat rising waters or the natural affinity deck so it's down here.

Red tap-out sligh
This is a version of sligh I tried out then found a deck off Glacier 14 for a better version which used Citadel of Pain which helps the deck. This uses all the red tap-out creatures then adds chemiric idols and barbed field to pump them up and deal extra damage.

B/U Discard-Avatar deck
This was probably the most ouvious deck after Prophecy came out. The deck relies on Mind swords,Parallax Nexus,and Scandalmonger
to drop Avatar of will on the 3rd or 4th turn. It needs more testing, but seems to be solid.

The other decks...
Well I haven't really tested them yet, but so far do not seem like they would get very far in the current field I will update this once I get the other playtest results.

Rabid Squirrels - This one is really theoretical, and maybe a little too silly to work in any practical sense. The premise of the deck is to get Squirrel Wrangler working with Groundskeeper. Is it an effective combo? Maybe, maybe not.This might be the direction to go, though, if you want to make a Foster or Kyren Negotiations deck. Use of the latter is obvious, and use the former to draw yourself into big creatures like Blastoderm and Silverglade Elemental, maybe even Avatar of Fury (which shouldn't be too hard to cast cheap in this environment). Hmmm. . . put Food Chain (for casting the big guys, not for Foster) in there and you might have the makings of a combo, albeit a somewhat involved one. Might be worth investigating, but it's going to be a hard deck to build right and whatever you do build has to be able to deal with Thrashing Wumpus, the deck's nemesis.

W/U Mageta Control -
This is a purely theoretical design that I have only heard discussed; no concrete deck list has been made for it yet. The premise is to build a deck around Mageta the Lion, with counters to protect it and Squees to make its use more efficient. Chimeric Idol would be the main kill card, since it can effectively dodge Mageta's board-clearing effect, and there would of course be Parallax Waves available and a few other creatures to help out in situations where Mageta doesn't come up quickly. I feel this could be a very strong deck if it's designed right, since it would have all the creature control and offense it needs as well as a solid defense behind counters and Parallax Wave as well as story circle and war tax. No pulling Stupid Pit Tricks on this deck! I'd really like to see something like this succeed and feel that it could be one of the brand-new decks to pop up in Top Eights at PQs.

R/B Land Destruction - Rain of Tears, Despoils, Stone Rains, Devastates, and Tectonic Breaks do give the deck a potential of 20 LD spells (and that's without considering Seismic Mage or Keldon Arsonists), although I'd probably try to go with 16-18 if I were building this deck. Adding Dark Rits in to speed it up only leaves about 14-16 other slots for removal and creatures. If you commit about half of that to removal spells then you're looking at a deck with only 7-8 creatures, so they have to be good ones. I'll leave it up to you to figure out what they should be, although Chimeric Idols seem like a natural choice for some of them.

First up I will post my evolution of the monoblue Cowardice deck.
20 Island
1 Rath's Edge
2 Dust Bowl
3 Tower of the Magistrate
4 Thwart
4 Counterspell
4 Rethink
4 Rhystic Scrying
4 Rhystic Deluge
4 Jolting Merfolk
4 Cowardice
4 Brainstorm
2 Barbed Wire
SB:
2 Panacea
2 Hoodwink
3 Kill Switch
4 Withdraw
4 Oraxid

The advantages of this are summed up solely by the existence of Rhystic Scrying as its "dig" card; rather than set your opponent back one turn, as Rhystic Study does, Rhystic Scrying sets you forward three turns, which is often just enough to build the perfect hand of countermagic, Cowardice, and targeters. The maindeck has self-contained answers to many problems, specifically Blastoderm, Highway Robbers, Pirates, Devout Witness, and Story Circle, with the hope that any Seals of Cleansings are nonlethal (you can buy time around them with Jolting Merfolk if it is played first) or countered, and that nobody has Aura Fracture in their maindeck. Sideboarding answers some of the problems of the deck: fast creature rushes in multiple colors (Oraxid is the "tech" against the monored attack deck, which is generally fast enough to get the win off of this deck if it draws enough burn), Aura Fracture resolving in the early game, Red burn spells (Panacea, which is damage prevention plus a targeter all in one!), and the ever frustrating "I’m going to sideboard in Distorting Lenses and stall you out" sideboard tactic that has cost me more matches than I would like to recount. The Switches are also intended to deal with Rising Waters’ artifact mana supply, hopefully hampering that deck as it is a tough battle. The deck is very strong against rebels, Black control, The pit, and goes about 50/50 against Red tap out. It does not fare well against W/U control decks espically one which I created which has so far destroyed almost anything that was thrown up against it.

Green Con-TR
This is one of my own deck designs created after I remembered Dawnstrider is in MM block. Here's the deck.
19x Forest
1x Rath's Edge
4x Horn of Ramos
4x Vine Trellis
4x Dawnstrider
4x Deepwood Elder
4x Land Grant
4x Briar Patch
4x Panacea
3x Calming Verse
2x Spore Frog
2x Jorael, Empress of the Beasts
2x Woodripper
2x Predator, Flagship
1x Rushwood Elemental
The main premise of the deck is to control the game with various damage prevention cards. Until you build up enough mana to start destroying creatures with Predator and finish the player with Rushwood Elemental building up for 5-10 turns.

Pirate Dung Heap
Here is another attempt to harness the power of pirates in another format. Let's see it didn't work in extended, T2, and now MM block. But, hey the format is so slow it actually might work, because the test results have been promising agianst rebel, and it did ok vs stompy and the pit.

HEAVY R/G BEATDOWN

Sean McKeown calls this deck "Ehrnam-Geddon v.2.0" and provides a deck list for it in a recent article on Neutral Ground's site. The basic premise is to use various effects to gain a quick mana advantage, then drop efficient big creatures backed by mass removal spells that it is highly resistant to, such as Flowstone Slide and Tectonic Break. I feel this design has quite a bit of potential, I have not yet tested it as completely as I have the other decks given above, but preliminary results suggest that it is fairly strong against the black decks (at least before sideboarding) and green beatdown but is weak against the Blue Waters deck. I suspect that it would be fairly strong against Rebel WW but I have not confirmed this with testing.

Ok well that's all and oh yeah if you have decent deck-lists of any of these decks or need any post or e-mail me at
Vegeta2711@yahoo.com

Here's my rankings for the decks that i have heard about.
1.Deck: Monowhite Rebels
Total number of T8 appearances so far: 14
Total number of T8 appearances of which I do not know the decklist: 3
5-8th Place Finishes: 6
3-4th Place Finishes: 3
2nd Place Finishes: 2
1st Place Finishes: 4
Total Number of Points: 34
Ranking: 1st
Hey wasn't banning Lin-Sivvi supposed to correct this problem? Now everyone wants Sergant to be emergancy banned. The basic rebel deck includes a bunch of 2 casting cost rebels with a few 3 mana ones backed up by Mageta or Blinding Angel. As for the spell base Parallax Wave,Story Circle,Cho Manno's blessing,and Reverant Mantra seem to be standard issue nowadays. Green/White rebels decks seem to have been the buzz week one, but with Skye Thompson's dominating performance with monowhite rebels, the single color version seems to have gained popularity. This deck has appeared in the greatest numbers and had won the most PTQ's. The deck is a strong contender and no matter what deck you play or where you play it, expect to face at least one of these decks along the way if not 2 or 3. This seems to be the best deck in the format right now.

2.Deck:Rising Waters
Total number of T8 appearances so far: 11
Total number of T8 appearances of which I do not know the decklist: 1
5-8th Place Finishes: 2
3-4th Place Finishes: 3
2nd Place Finishes: 3
1st Place Finishes: 3
Total Number of Points: 30
Ranking: 2nd
Waters players are seeming to go down in number and getting worse in actual skill.
I'm including Black/Blue Waters in this category. There are 2 U/B waters decks that have made T8's. 1 took 1st, one took T8. Since there is very little black in either one, I'm going to group them together under one category: Waters. However, if we see a lot of blue black waters in the future I may split this category. Waters has the second best record of all of the decks, sporting 3 1st place finishes and the most number of 2nd place finishes at 3. Waters is going to be a dominant force throughout the tournament, but it will have to adapt to deal with Cho-Manno's blessing. This card can single handily wreck a Rising Waters deck. Again, if you plan to do well be prepared to face this deck.

3. Deck: Green/White Rebels
Total number of T8 appearances so far: 13
Total number of T8 appearances of which I do not know the decklist: 4
5-8th Place Finishes: 10
3-4th Place Finishes: 2
2nd Place Finishes: 1
1st Place Finishes: 0
Total Number of Points: 17
Ranking: 3rd
This is much better than the normal set of rebels, but it's mana problems knock this deck down a lot.The green white rebels deck has placed more people in T8 than even the Waters monster, but only one person has played this deck to the finals. The fact remains that this is a solid deck that can lose occasional color difficulties. Blastoderm is one of the most powerful creatures in this environment (along with Ramosian sergeant which is also in this deck) and is often nearly unstoppable. It's my feeling that this deck is not as strong as a Skye Thompson monowhite deck, but it is still a contender, and would be the best deck if it never had colored mana problems.

Deck: Blue Beatdown
Total number of T8 appearances so far: 7
Total number of T8 appearances of which I do not know the decklist: 0
5-8th Place Finishes: 3
3-4th Place Finishes: 2
2nd Place Finishes: 1
1st Place Finishes: 1
Total Number of Points: 14
Ranking: 4th
Even if this deck isn't very good you will see it. It is extremely easy to put together The deck will capitalize on a mana hosed opponent and is capable of getting an explosive draw every now and then. Otherwise this deck is just a pile of crud.

Deck: Blue/Red Control
Total number of T8 appearances so far: 3
Total number of T8 appearances of which I do not know the decklist: 1
5-8th Place Finishes: 2
3-4th Place Finishes: 0
2nd Place Finishes: 0
1st Place Finishes: 1
Total Number of Points: 6
Ranking: 5th
I know there have been some blue red avatar decks going around, and I have yet to either test one or see one in action, but I can tell you from seeing the deck that took first (The only one of this type) in action that I was amazed. The blue beatdown deck barely stood a chance even against a seemingly bad draw. The deck that won played no Avatars to my knowledge, or any red creatures. It has Seals of Shock, Thunderclap, and Flameshot to accompany its mostly blue base. It may have just been a fluke win, but I'm not so sure. Watch out for this deck, but don't expect tons of it.

Deck: Black/Green Control
Total number of T8 appearances so far: 3
Total number of T8 appearances of which I do not know the decklist: 0
5-8th Place Finishes: 2
3-4th Place Finishes: 0
2nd Place Finishes: 1
1st Place Finishes: 0
Total Number of Points: 5
Ranking: 6th
Originally we saw this deck in the form of Death Pit Offering/Natural Affinity. Now the deck has gone off in all kinds of directions, and no 2 decklists come within 10 cards of each other. The deck has access to powerful cards like Thrashing Wumpus and Blastoderm, but faces the same colored-mana challenges as the GW decks.

Deck: Green/Red Control
Total number of T8 appearances so far: 1
Total number of T8 appearances of which I do not know the decklist: 0
5-8th Place Finishes: 0
3-4th Place Finishes: 0
2nd Place Finishes: 1
1st Place Finishes: 0
Total Number of Points: 3
Ranking: 7th
I've been talking about powerful creatures, and if you want them this deck has them. Blastoderm, Arc Mage, Ancient Hydra, and more, backed by powerful spells such as Saproling Burst and Rystic Lightning. Rupture can serve as a kill, but the deck ran no enchantment removal, which I would think is a mistake. I think this deck could become more powerful with a better tuned version.

Deck:Blue/White control
Total number of T8 appearances so far: 2
Total number of T8 appearances of which I do not know the decklist: 1
5-8th Place Finishes: 1
3-4th Place Finishes: 1
2nd Place Finishes: 0
1st Place Finishes: 0
Total Number of Points: 3
Ranking: 8th
Comments: This deck is one of the stranger decks that I've seen. The deck for which I've seen the decklist attempts to combine 2 of the most powerful strategies in the format, rebels and Counterspells.The deck houses almost every rebel searcher known to man, and it packs Wave of Reckoning and Seals. The second deck is built around Mageta control with spot removal and countermagic to back it up. If this deck is seen, I expect it to be some version of the latter, but I could be wrong.

Deck: Black/White Control
Total number of T8 appearances so far: 1
Total number of T8 appearances of which I do not know the decklist: 1
5-8th Place Finishes: 0
3-4th Place Finishes: 1
2nd Place Finishes: 0
1st Place Finishes: 0
Total Number of Points: 2
Ranking: 9th
This deck is slightly worse then Black control because of mana problems and the cards that have to be moved to make room for the seals of cleansing. Of course you gain artifact and enchantment removal.

Deck: Red/White Rebel Burn
Total number of T8 appearances so far: 1
Total number of T8 appearances of which I do not know the decklist: 0
5-8th Place Finishes: 0
3-4th Place Finishes: 1
2nd Place Finishes: 0
1st Place Finishes: 0
Total Number of Points: 2
Ranking: 9th
Another attempt at combining rebels with another color. The interesting thing is that seemingly ANY color can combine with rebels. The deck was chock full of burn and should be less vulnerable to things like Cho-Manno's Blessing.

Deck: MonoBlack Mercs
Total number of T8 appearances so far: 2
Total number of T8 appearances of which I do not know the decklist: 0
5-8th Place Finishes: 2
3-4th Place Finishes: 0
2nd Place Finishes: 0
1st Place Finishes: 0
Total Number of Points: 2
Ranking: 11th
I really don't see how these decks made top 8 at all. They have no enchantment or artifact removal so they lose to a LOT of cards. Perhaps luck and explosive draws had something to do with the success. 2 decks did make top 8 though, and that's hard to argue with.

Deck: Monoblue control without waters.
Total number of T8 appearances so far: 1
Total number of T8 appearances of which I do not know the decklist: 0
5-8th Place Finishes: 1
3-4th Place Finishes: 0
2nd Place Finishes: 0
1st Place Finishes: 0
Total Number of Points: 1
Ranking: 12th
This deck looked exactly like waters, but without the waters. It had the bouncers, the countermagic, the bouncers, the barriers. I can see wanting to be able to win games without waters on the table, but to not play with it?

Decks that were played, but didn't make it.
Red Sligh
My how this deck was the buzz, but now it plays like total crud. It has no staying power at all plus no artifact and enchantment removal.

Cowardice
This deck I don't know what happened it just decided to go and die somewhere.

can you take back a land drop?-in a ptq tournament, where big prizes are on the line, no. But of course, if you have a VERY nice opponent, then MAYBE...but no.

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