B/W Martyr of Sands

-Greg

Anyone who's ever played with my wife, or even played in the same room with her, knows this: my wife is more interested in gaining copious amounts of life than she is in winning the game. Even in decks not specifically designed to gain life, I have seen her bend her cardboard minions to her devastating will and shoot her life total into the hundreds. I remember a recent 1K she, to the chagrin of a very serious player (who was feverishly snapping the cards in his finely tuned deck), crashed an exalted Baneslayer Angel repeatedly into a wall of bird tokens, climbing quite rapidly to 246 life before he agreed to go to the third game. Even worse, before the advent of the M10 rules changes it was quite common to hear things from her like "Equip Loxodon Warhammer on my Divinity of Pride." These games were not about winning. They were about abject humiliation of an opponent; amidst a generation of boys who were raised to believe whole-heartedly in self-affirmation through the accrual of "points," - she viciously hammered (no pun intended) into their heads a startling and inescapable truth: shes has way more points than you.

Another peculiar, yet endearing, quality she has is an unabashed hatred for Extended.

"EXTENDED IS TERRIBLE." - Wife, via Twitter
"Hell no I don't want to play Extended. Let's just play Standard." - Wife, at the table
"It's boring to watch someone combo off. Why do a hobby if not to have fun?" - Wife, Via Gchat just now.
"Of course I love you; I put the knife down, didn't I?" - Wife, in the kitchen

And while that last quote isn't exactly about Extended, she does have a good point about the high level of awful a player experiences when watching their opponent play card after card with no chance of interacting with the game-state. That is boring. The magic, though, is that Extended is not legacy; there's no Ad Nauseum/Tendrils of Corruption, no Dream Halls/Conflux, and not any real combo deck that can compete with the insane level of aggro that abounds. Ok, ok, there's Hexmage/Depths - but that deck is, to be fair... Bad. The only way I can figure out that it made top 8 at Austin is that it was driven by the highly competent, and irredeemably lucky, PV. Ok, and sure, you've got your Sword of the Meek/Thopter Foundry package... Ok, that deck is good, but not unbeatable or format warping.

And don't even tell me about Dragonstorm or All-in-Red with Deus of Calamity. Unless you're just pushed to the point of drooling at a turn 1 fatty, wonky decks with unpredictable, unreliable, and unrecoverable tendencies aren't going to give you the power AND consistency you need to win, um, consistently. And powerfully.

But I digress! So now, with my wife's two most prominent MTG idiosyncrasies detailed - how was I to convince her that Extended was a fun format?

FUCKING MARTYR OF SANDS.

I have tinkered with this deck a little, and found it to be enjoyable despite how long the games tended to be. Dying with this deck on the table in front of you is harder than it should be, and the look of despair on your opponents faces when they realize how much damage they'll have to do to you is priceless. Problem was, like with Conley Woods' deck from Austin, it's equally difficult to kill with this Deck of Defense (+200 HP, +20 Defense, -1000 Attack). At first, I splashed red. Hated it. Then I splashed green. Hated it. Then I went back to Black/White. Seemed better. Then I started adding Felidar Sovereign, and we were getting somewhere. Here's the decklist:

// Deck file for Magic Workstation (http://www.magicworkstation.com)

// Lands
2 [EVE] Fetid Heath
2 [TSP] Vesuva
2 [ZEN] Arid Mesa
3 [ZEN] Emeria, the Sky Ruin
4 [GP] Godless Shrine
4 [ZEN] Marsh Flats
1 [SHM] Mistveil Plains
6 [M10] Plains
1 [M10] Swamp

// Creatures
1 [ZEN] Felidar Sovereign
2 [SHM] Kitchen Finks
4 [CS] Martyr of Sands
2 [PLC] Necrotic Sliver
2 [ALA] Ranger of Eos

// Spells
3 [CFX] Path to Exile
2 [M10] Diabolic Tutor
3 [LRW] Oblivion Ring
1 [SHM] Runed Halo
1 [ZEN] Sorin Markov
4 [ARE] Castigate
4 [9E] Phyrexian Arena
2 [DIS] Proclamation of Rebirth
2 [10E] Wrath of God
2 [ZEN] Day of Judgment

// Sideboard
SB: 1 [CFX] Path to Exile
SB: 1 [SHM] Runed Halo
SB: 2 [M10] Pithing Needle
SB: 4 [PLC] Extirpate
SB: 3 [ZEN] Ravenous Trap
SB: 1 [EVE] Figure of Destiny
SB: 2 [LRW] Wispmare
SB: 1 [SOK] Kagemaro, First to Suffer

The drill is simple. Draw a shit-load of cards with Arena, gain a shit-load of life with Martyr, recur a shit-load of dudes with Emeria, kill a shit-load of lands with the Slivers, and eventually win with a hard-to-kill Sorin or a Felidar when your life total is in the upper shit-loads.

A friend recommended we try Dread Return in the main for extra flair, and I'm definitely going to try running a copy. The two Emerias bring back plenty of Necrotic Slivers (to lock them out of mana) and Martyrs (to gain gratuitous amounts of life), but I can see a situation in which you might Emeria back two Finks, sac, and dread return them for Sovereign against an opponent with no lands. Seems good, but possibly win-moreish. Another option I'm entertaining is Grim Discovery. There are lots of Ghost Quarters floating around these days, and being able to buy-back your Emeria and a dude seems like a solid plan in a deck that needs Emeria and some dudes to recur.

Anyway, I'm tired of writing for now. I'll update in the next few days or so after some playtesting with both options.

As always, comments, critique, and hate-mail are more than welcome. Hit me up!