Deck lists for All Formats!

As usual, I have been brewing tons of decks for many formats, mostly Standard and Extended though given their relevance. While most of my lists don't ever even make it to getting sleeved/proxied, some of them become my next tournament deck. I'll just post my deck and the format and talk a little bit about each one. Also, I'm not going to waste my time and hyperlink every single card, so instead if you don't know a card, I'll just help you out and put this here for you :)

http://gatherer.wizards.com/Pages/Default.aspx

Extended Decks

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RUG Tempo

Creatures
2 Birds of Paradise
4 Lotus Cobra
4 Kitchen Finks
4 Bloodbraid Elf
3 Inferno Titan
2 Vendilion Clique

Non creature Spells
4 Cryptic Command
4 Jace, the Mind Sculptor
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Sword of Feast and Famine
1 Burst Lightning

26 Lands (still working on mana base)
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First, I'd like to say that I want to actually think of a good name for this deck, since in standard, block, and extended, its never been more than "RUG" or "RUG Ramp/Control", and a deck that is this awesome needs its own name in my opinion. Anyhow, about the deck...

When I first started testing Extended, I wanted to try and see how my standard deck would fare in extended, since it's such a strong deck in standard that it's silly to think it couldn't be strong in a bigger format. I was pretty pleasently surprised at the power level of this deck in extended too. As it turns out this deck goes bonkers with Cryptic Command. When I ran it, I ran more of a traditional RUG though, with more spells, bombs, and countermagic, and less small creatures and stuff. With the addition of Sword of Feast and Famine and the more aggressive extended meta game I decided a "smaller" list could work quite well in the format. Extended's card pool can really take this sort of idea since the creatures in extended are the best in any format with the amount of sets available (I mean, if you added Time Spiral block to Extended, you'd have a large majority of the creatures played in Legacy...)

For Starters, I put two swords in the list. This deck even without Preordains and Explores will still probably see a good amount of cards thanks to Cryptics, Jaces, and Bloodbraids, so with any luck I'll see a sword almost every game without the chance of having them clog up my draws. After that I wanted to make a strong, more creature based list that could help accomodate the swords while still keeping RUG's strong tempo core. Since Mana Leak was one of the first cards out of the deck, Bloodbraid was one of the first in, giving the deck even more stupid nut draws, card advantage, and tempo all in one! Kitchen Finks lives twice, making it a great contender for the sword while also helping the decks rough game one match up vs. decks with Mountains that come into play tapped. Due to the desire to put in more creatures and less spells I took out Explores, but still wanted to keep a decent amount of ramp in the deck. The perfect slot for this was Birds of Paradise, being a great mana accelerator, mana fixer (which this deck wants more of,) and great target for Sword of Feast and Famine thanks to flying. Vendilion Clique also found his (her? its? their??) way into the deck due to just being an amazing creature overall that is perhaps most importantly evasive, something the Sword wants. Finally, this deck wouldn't be RUG without powerhouse bombs to round out the game, and Inferno Titan is my go to man. He is currently the Titan of choice as I'm not too fond of Frost Titan but I may find myself cutting an Inferno or two for a Frosty if the meta calls for it.

For spells, 4 Bolt and 4 Jace remain the same as a key part of the deck. Bolt I think is going to be a particularly strong card in extended, as a lot of things have/gain protection from black, and as stated before a lot of people are going to be equipping a lot during this season, so having a strong instant speed removal that hits before and after sword equip seems the way to go. Lightning Bolt alone was one of the main reasons for me thinking about this deck as it uses Bolt very well. Burst lightning acts as a "5th" Lightning Bolt. Jace is what makes RUG, and I think if RUG were to have a more proper name I would call it the Jace deck since it uses Jace so well. The Swords I have already explained, and they are going to be very key for this deck and will demolish many decks such as RG Scapeshift. Cryptic Command is the best thing this deck could ever ask for, and is probably going to be the strongest card in the deck.

I look forward to testing this more and will give more info.

More decks coming soon...

Extended Metagame Analysis and Predictions

Extended season is drawing to a close but we still have a few more PTQ's to go. Mirrodin Besieged has had a pretty awesomely large impact on extended (and every other format of magic) and has already changed the format a lot. As everyone (or at least I hope everyone) has noticed, Sword of Feast and Famine has had the biggest impact thus far, finding its way into a handful of currently existing decks, and completely defining a Standard deck that very quickly turned into an extended deck. While there have been a couple other impacting cards such as Green Sun's Zenith, Go for the Throat, Tezzeret, etc., none have had nearly as much of an impact as Sword of Feast and Famine. Already the extended version of standards Caw-go - the deck based perhaps based around the sword - has won a handful of PTQ's and have made several appearances in top 8's. With the combination of MBS and the general movement of a format, we can determine a few things about the format.

1. If Alara-Zendikar standard was all about defining 4-drop cards, the current Lorwyn-MBS extended is all about powerhouse 2-drops. Between Bitterblossom, Stoneforge Mystic, Prismatic Omen, Fauna Shaman, and even Quasali Pridemage, a lot of the top decks are defined by extremely powerful two mana cost cards, which most decks want to play on Turn 2. If you plan on countering some of these, you better be really lucky at rolling for first or expect to be facing a lot of pain, no matter what the deck.
2. Everything is fast and aggressive. No, not every deck is taping as many creatures as they can, but everything has a strategy it is trying to employ very fast. The only control decks placing well are Faeries and the new U/W, both of which plan on putting some creatures on the board before controlling the rest of the game. If the metagame is to remain the same as it has been from the past post-MBS PTQ's, expect fast game plans.
3. Perhaps the most important, there is no top deck. Yes, Faeries has been performing very well, but as of recently there has been so many decks performing well and winning PTQ's. There is Jund, Bant, Naya, Elves, U/W, several different types of Scapeshift, GW Trap, Mono Red, Faeries, and many more. I have reason to believe that if you can take almost anything to the top in Extended, which is very exciting. On the other hand, there are so many decks and game plans that you must prepare for, so much that it seems more beneficial to be more proactive than reactive (perhaps why there is a big lack of control.) 

That being said, there are a few predictions I would make given the nature of people and how formats flow.

• The format is becoming slightly less interactive. With the exception of the two only control decks that I mentioned above, almost no one is playing much removal, counter magic, or disruption as most decks just try to do their plan better than you. Yes, people are playing these things, but with decks like Elves and Scapeshift constantly rocking the top tables, I can't say the entire format cares that much about what you're doing. If you have a game plan that is hard to disrupt, you can probably make it work well (at least game 1.) 

• While this will vary location to location, I can say generally, expect lots of U/W with swords, RG Scapeshift, and Faeries. The first two you can expect a lot of not only because of their power level but mostly because they are slightly altered standard decks. Faeries you can expect a lot of because it has been considered the 'best deck' for the season and most people have picked it up or have been playing it for several seasons now.
• Sword of Feast and Famine is going to be really popular. Whether or not you are playing the sword yourself (something I recommend, its REALLY good...) you should have a plan against the sword because you will see it a lot. It is used in U/W and Faeries which as I said are already very popular decks, and it see's play in many other decks such as Bant and some new Naya builds, and will see play in many more decks. Hopefully you've been hit by this card a few times already to know just how devastating it is, so plan your decks with this card in mind.

Those are my predictions for those of you planning on going to a serious extended tournament any time soon. As for myself, well, I still haven't decided what to play, as I play for specific tournaments and often change my deck for each tournament. I'm very excited with this format (except Scapeshift... Valakut can go f*** itself) and I'm probably going to try a handful of decks before I play at Seattle and my home town of Portland. Currently I'm playing Faeries, as I've always wanted to play the deck and now have the cards available to me. However, I may just design an awesome build of my current standard deck RUG, as I've seen a few in the top 8's recently and I can already play the deck very well. I'll post up decklists when I get them rolling ;)

Brandon