No, not an acid flashback! Star City Games Open Seattle took place a few weeks back and my comrade Kyle Monson and I decided that packing red was just asking to get destroyed. We had imagined fields of Spellskites and Kor Firewalkers. Not to mention the extremely low top 8 rates the deck was putting up. We decided to leave our Grim Lavamancers and Goblin Guide's behind. Kyle chose Valakut, which is somewhat of his go to deck, and I chose the Tempered Steel deck that was starting to see some success. I played Ryuuichiro Ishida's 1st Place Nationals deck card for card as a last minute decision. You can check the decklist here: http://sales.starcitygames.com//deckdatabase/displaydeck.php?DeckID=39675

I recently did a MODO Release Event and open this pool. I was not impressed to say the least. It didn't feature much except for a lot of artifact removal and almost enough for a decent poison deck. I went an astonishing 1-3 with this pool, although took everybody to three games. I am interested to know how others might have gone with this pool. Any input would be greatly appreciated!

At first I wasn't too impressed with this pool. It was a little low on the number of infect creatures, but having 2x Flesh-Eater Imp seemed pretty good as well as having 2x Spread the Sickness. I also knew that Carnifex Demon could win games on his own. The deck also had many good equipment cards to help not-so-strong infect cards like Flensermite be okay late game. Trigon of Rage was also really good in this deck making Flensermites serious threats. Here was my pool and list:

I just want everybody to know that the site is not dead, and neither am I. I have been having computer problems as well as a whole lot of work lately, and haven't had time to draft or post new content. I will be getting new content up this weekend, as well as drafting more often. Please check back often, and sorry for the delay. If anybody would like to write articles for the front page, please let me know. I would be more than happy to publish them for you. You can contact the website via the webform http://www.idahomagic.com/contact.

Thanks,
Pete

I got my pool back and wasn’t overly thrilled with it. It had bombs in Contagion Engine and Venser, but didn’t look like it had that great of stuff otherwise. I had some a few nice green cards, but they were mostly double green so I couldn’t splash them. I could splash the double Shatter, but didn’t want to sacrifice consistency. I went about using my two bombs as best I could. This was my pool:

For this pool I was immediately drawn to white. It had a lot of flyers including 3 Razor Hippogriffs and 2 Revoke Existence. I wanted to focus on metalcraft so I cut some of the good colored cards to fit in more mediocre artifacts. I removed Auriok Sunchaser and Kemba's Skyguard to put in both Replicas. I figured if I added the Copper Myr, I could also drop a land. That worked out great. I ended up going 4-0 pretty easily. I think I should have cut one more plains for a mountain. Even though I only had two red cards I still had trouble casting those spells. I always seemed to have a forest in my opener, but I only needed green for the disenchant effect of the replica. Sword of Body and Mind was amazing. I managed to deck a couple of people including someone who had a turn 4 Elspeth and gained over a dozen life with her. I had to cut some pretty good equipment because I didn't want to have too much. I kept the cheap ones and I also had Tempered Steel so Shield, Exoskeleton, and Arbalest went to the board. The combination of flyers and equipment just owned everyone. I never had trouble turning on my Relics with 14 artifacts and the 3 Griffs. Emperion was too expensive, especially as a vulnerable artifact, so it also went to the board.

I felt my pool was very strong, plenty of removal. My main plan seemed to be play some guys and blast anything they play out of the way and win, I like it simple. I had to cut 1 Neurok Replica and didn’t play any equipment (Barbed Battlegear, Sylvok Lifestaff, Bladed Pinions, Accorder’s Shield). I never liked equipment, always felt clunky and turn wasting. However, it seems to be pretty damn good so I will probably change my tune in the future. I also felt like playing Wall of Tanglecord just because big walls are annoying to play against.

I had a lot of metalcraft going on. I got super greedy by splashing the white, but I really wanted the flyers. Maybe I should have played the Opal, but I don’t like playing cards that do nothing without metalcraft and I already have the 5/5. Even though the Clone helps my metalcraft it just seems like too much for a 2/2. I didn’t have enough big creatures to hit with it so I left in on the sidelines. My pool in general was really good. My blue had Volition Reigns and Trinket Mage. My black had Grasp of Darkness and Skinrender, but I liked this configuration best. Unfortunately, I made three big mistakes in my games because I was as familiar with the cards as I should be by now. I haven’t played any Scars except for the real life prerelease.

When I heard states was only two weeks away, I knew I had better find an aggro deck quick. I hadn't seen much of the Scars of Mirrodin cards so I briefly ran though the spoiler. I didn't want to spend a ton of money getting new cards as I rarely have a chance to play constructed these days. I knew red had a lot of good burn available and started creating a list.

I was pretty disappointed with my deck. I didn’t have much removal for creatures or artifacts (Skin Render, Rust Tick, Acid Web Spider and Ratchet Bomb). I didn’t have equipment that pumped power, which is always welcome in an infect deck. But I figured I had so many infect cards including the absurd dragon that I had to go that route. I played Tumble Magnet without a way to add counters just so I could force through the final points of poison and it worked nicely. I eventually cut Asceticism for Panic Spellbomb to further that plan. I had mana problems in my one match loss even though I had plenty of fixing and stumbled a lot considering I am half mana sources with 17 land, 2 myr, 1 land searching spellbomb. I think the mana base was correct. My last cut was Fume Spitter, who I boarded in occasionally- great for killing Tel Jihad Fallen. I had some solid white including Sunblast Angel and Myrsmith, but I like the synergy of this deck. My rares were Shape Anew (foil), Memoricide, Sunblast Angel, Asceticism, Rachet Bomb, Skithiryx, and Tower of Calamities. I thought the Tower was too slow for my deck and still think so. I also had the blue Trigon which I didn’t play because it seemed too slow.