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...
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