LAST YEAR'S METAGAME

These are the decks that dominated the type two scene last year:
Counter-Rebel
King Red
Fires in all its incarnations
Sap-Orb
Merfolk-Orb
U/W Control
Machine Head
Probe-Go, Nether-Go and all other Gos
Skies
And near the end of the season Pink Rebel which dominated NGO Grudge Match.

Which decks no longer exist? Counter and Pink Rebel, all go decks, Skies and Sap-Orb(No more Spontaneous Generation means loss of win condition). All the other decks lose something, be it Fires Sap.Burst, Blasto and Port or Blue/White's Foil and Accumulated Knoweledge. So this means that each of these decks must find replacement cards or fall out of Tier-One. Odyssey may provided some subsitutions but from what i've seen in the set, there isn't much. So that means all new decks or old decks taking new directions.

IBC DECKS: CROSS-OVER?

IBC is one of the most competitive Constructed formats ever, and many great decks have been made: Domain, Solution, No-Mar, Counter-Trenches, Liquid Tempo, Rocketshoes, B/R Aggro, Hippo-Control and the list goes on. A few of these decks may make the cross-over to Type 2, like G/R Beats and No-Mar, but the majority won't be able to handle the old veterans of the format unless they evole, which will happen because of some great cards for them in Odyssey. But I don't feel like going into specifics for this is all speculation.

POSSIBLE NEW DECKS AND ARCHTYPES

A lot of new deck types are floating around since the release of Odyssey, such as Mirari decks, Traumatize and Haunting Echo decks, the return of Stompy, ect. I have been personally trying to build decks that could end up being Tier-One, but, of course, without knowing what will be in the field, I can't tell. First up is a replacement to the old Skies deck:

Voyage in the Skies dec.
4x Aether Burst
4x Memory Laspe
4x Sleight of Hand
4x Opt
4x Standstill
4x Counterspell
4x Thought Devourer
4x Thought Eater
4x Thought Nibbler
4x Spell Book
4x Syncopate
16x Islands

(Land count is unusually low because of the amount of card drawing.)

As you can see, this deck completely relies on getting a Spell Book in play so that you still have a hand after you cast your crits. The deck plays with a very, very low curve, so it can beat almost any control deck with its speed and counter back up. It also should be able to use the time advantage that memory laspe and Aether burst provides to outrace beatdown decks.

Next up is a combo deck that I have been thinkering around with for a while. This is probably the first deck in about a year that can get a thrid-turn kill:

Power of the Lich dec.

The Combo:
3x Nefarious Lich
4x Wild Mongrel
4x Confessor

The Tutors:
2x Eldameri's Call
2x Diabolic Tutor
2x Sterling Grove

Mana Excel:
4x Birds of Paradise
4x Lay of the Land

The Safeguards:
4x Devoted Caretaker
1x Overground Estate
4x Duress
4x Life Burst

Lands:
4x Llanowar Wastes
3x Caves of Koilos
3x Brushlands
5x Forest
3x Swamp
2x Plains

(Land count subject to change)

For those of you who do not know what the combo parts do, here they are directly from the spoiler:
Card Name: Confessor
Mana Cost: W
Type & Class: Creature - Cleric
Pow/Tou: 1/1
Card Text: Whenever a player discards a card from his or her hand, you may gain 1 life.
Flavor Text: "There will be gains for our losses. There will be rights for our wrongs."
Artist: John Avon
Rarity: C
Card #: 15/350

Card Name: Wild Mongrel
Mana Cost: 1G
Type & Class: Creature - Hound
Pow/Tou: 2/2
Card Text: Discard a card from your hand: Wild Mongrel gets +1/+1 and becomes the color of your choice until end of turn.
Flavor Text: It teaches you to play dead.
Artist: Anthony S. Waters
Rarity: C
Card #: 283/350

Card Name: Nefarious Lich
Mana Cost: BBBB
Type & Class: Enchantment

Card Text: If you would be dealt damage, remove that many cards in your graveyard from the game instead.
If you can't, you lose the game. If you would gain life, draw that many cards instead. When Nefarious Lich leaves play, you lose the game.
Artist: Jerry Tiritilli
Rarity: R
Card #: 153/350

Just to show you how you can kill your opponent in three turns, here is the turn by turn:

Turn 1: Drop Llanowar Wastes, play Birds of Paradise
Turn 2: Drop a Swamp, play a Wild Mongrel and a Confessor
Turn 3: Drop a Cave of Koilos, play the Nefarious Lich and watch your opponent squirm as you deal him twenty+ damage with your Mongrel.

This deck has a lot of things going for it, like the lack of quality counterspells, the low number of decks playing main-decked enchantment removal and the speed factor against aggro. The deck's main weakness is the fact that if you get rid of the Confessor, it makes winning very difficult.

And finally, the last decklist that I will be posting today, new-age Ponza. Ponza never got so many potent land destruction cards as it did in Odyssey. So without futher ado, the deck:

LD Wins 2001-2002 dec.
4x Pillage
4x Stone Rain
4x Firebolt
3x Demolish
4x Flame Burst
3x Lava Blister
4x Urza's Rage
3x Millstone
2x Price of Glory
2x Mirari
4x Fire Diamonds
22x Mountains

With all this LD, it's nice to know that you can double it with Mirari. With two kill conditions (Burn and Milling), this deck should be a force to reckon with if multi-colored and mana-intensive decks rule the format.

CONCLUSION

Like all good things, this article must come to an end . I will be updating my theories on the Type 2 environment right before and right after the States/Provincials/Territories/Islands Championships to see if anything I have said today is true. Anyways, I hope that this article was coherent enought to understand and you enjoyed reading it.

Thank you and Goodnight,

Notherin

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quote:

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Originally posted by Notherin:
You know Implode, you can say that about every combo deck that ever existed. Why? Because the entire point of the deck is for the combo to go off! Combo decks are made to ever win big or not at all.

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quote:

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Originally posted by mattm:
for the new skies deck with 12 fliers that reduce your hand. if you have 2 nibblers and a devourer in play, then yuo have a hand size of -1, right.

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that is what the spellbooks are for.

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