4 Llanowar Elves
4 Boreal Druid
4 Indrik Stomphowler
2 Phantom Centaur
4 Ravenous Baloth
4 Scrabbling Claws
4 Call of the Herd
3 Sword of Fire and Ice
3 Umezawa's Jitte
4 Trinisphere
3 Blinkmoth Well
4 Contested Cliffs
4 Stomping Ground
2 Windswept Heath
6 Forest
1 Mountain
4 Wooded Foothills
1 Pendelhaven
Sideboard:
4 Dwarven Blastminer
4 Chalice of the Void
4 Ancient Grudge
3 Starstorm |
  The
Bests 2007 Extended.
Description of deck by Mike Flores @
www.wizards.com
(quoted):
The Bests deck seems like a "big and dumb"
creature deck but it is actually a very intricate attack deck - "attack"
not just in the sense of being an offensive creature deck, but in the
sense of attacking the metagame itself from multiple angles
simultaneously.
Bests just trumps most creature decks in the abstract
because it has big and fat monsters that (usually) stand next to Contested
Cliffs and eat all the creatures that actually get played (good thing no
one really plays fellow Beast Spiritmonger any more). The deck has many
basic lands and can easily operate under Destructive Flow as long as you
are aware of which lands you search up with your Onslaught duals. It
laughs off a NO Stick, locking down Isochron Scepter with Blinkmoth Well
main deck and complicating the mathematics with Indrik Stomphowler, which
is by no means a trump but is nevertheless a scary monster that can't be
allowed to hit unopposed, presenting a nigh unbeatable sideboard plan. At
the same time, Bests forces the opponent to play at its own plodding pace
rather than racing with normally breakneck Extended tempo.
The main card that alters time in the main is
Trinisphere. First-turn Llanowar Elves, second-turn Trinisphere, is not a
win in and of itself, but it will generally imply a win against TEPS or NO
Stick. TEPS has to deal with the Trinisphere before it can go off with
Storm, and Isochron Scepter costs five mana to operate (two to activate
the thing, three more taxing the usually free imprinted spell);
Trinisphere affects spells set up by Mind's Desire, too.
Bests is the, pardon my diction, best example of a new
sort of sideboarding philosophy that I've been working on for the past
year or so since the Japanese demolished the World Championships with
their transformative Ghazi-Glare deck last year. The goal of any good
sideboarding should be to reposition one's deck into the superior
strategic position given known matchups and variables… It is just that
most sideboarding ends up consisting of half-assed tweaks that can
sometimes remove inefficiencies but don't do anything significantly
proactive. I think that one of the major limitations of a Wish sideboard
is that Wish decks lack the volume of sideboard cards to accomplish a
repositioning and just reinforce the status quo. Reinforcing the status
quo of a bad matchup just means you are going to lose again.
Conversely in Bests we have a sideboard that, while not
truly transformative, repositions the Bests deck to attack the opponent's
strategy, and in most sideboarded matchups, makes the game unwinnable for
the opponent unless he deals with any or all of the sideboard cards (this
assumes the sideboard cards show up). When sideboarded versus TEPS, for
instance, Bests will present with Chalice of the Void and Dwarven
Blastminer (and usually some Ancient Grudges), where in Game 1 Bests had
only Trinisphere. Playing against TEPS, the math of fundamental turns
indicates that TEPS is the beatdown and Bests is the control just because
TEPS is at least three turns, and possibly five turns, faster. Bests is a
poor control deck because it isn't actually controlling anything. When
Bests wins Game 1, it is either because Bests got some kind of dream draw
of Boreal Druid, Call of the Herd, Phantom Centaur, Sword of Fire and Ice,
and TEPS got a (comparatively) slow draw, or Bests just hit the quick
Trinisphere, turning TEPS into a deck slow as glass, slow enough for the
elephantine Bests to be the quicker.
In a sideboarded game, Bests is the beatdown. Bests
presents second-turn Dwarven Blastminer or Trinisphere, or a quick Chalice
of the Void with one or two counters. If any one of these cards hits, the
game is very difficult for TEPS to win (TEPS is forced into the control
role, and actually has to answer threats before winning), and if any two
come online, the game is basically unwinnable. For instance, Trinisphere
followed by Chalice of the Void with two counters removes the possibility
for the opponent to play Burning Wish or Hull Breach to deal with the
Trinisphere, meaning that TEPS can't win at all. Dwarven Blastminer can
keep the TEPS deck's mana low enough that it can never overcome the
Trinisphere. Dwarven Blastminer might optimally play next to Chalice of
the Void with no counters, because the Dwarven Blastminer is holding down
the TEPS deck's lands, and a Chalice of the Void for zero will prevent the
opponent from playing Chrome Mox or Lotus Bloom. Saving Chalice of the
Void for two, Ancient Grudge works well with most of these cards,
containing Lotus Bloom before TEPS can hit the main phase. None of these
cards is designed to win any matchup in the abstract, but to force the
opponent out of his deck's comfort zone; non-interactive decks tend to
fold when forced to interact, and even "broken combo decks" look a lot
less broken when they have to play at the speed of a 4/4 for five.
Trinisphere is bad enough for NO Stick, turning all of
its Counterspells into (yuck) Cancels, simultaneously making an investment
in Isochron Scepter look like an investment in tech stocks in the spring
of 2000, but the addition of Dwarven Blastminer, Ancient Grudge, and
Chalice of the Void are absolute hell on the deck. If Bests can hit any
Beast, it is very difficult for NO Stick to keep Teferi in play due to
Contested Cliffs. The Trinisphere, Chalice, and Ancient Grudge together
contain the deck's namesake… Most NO Stick decks can't even win with a
Chalice of the Void with two counters in play, nor remove it.
This is obviously my favorite new deck of the format,
though my original was 60 cards (Daniel crammed an extra Sword of Fire and
Ice into the main). This was to help accommodate the sideboard change of
adding Starstorm to the sideboard… I lost to the U/G Opposition deck the
week of the 10th, because unlike you, even though I was aware of it, I
wasn't really prepared to play and beat that deck (please refer to the
preceding section!). With Starstorm in the sideboard, the Opposition deck
is pretty easy to beat. Their clock is slow (for Extended), and unless
Bests is under a full Opposition lock, Starstorm will unclog the board at
any point. U/G can only reliably win with Spectral Force, and any Beast
can contain a Spectral Force with Contested Cliffs. Daniel removed one
Tormod's Crypt and two Loaming Shamans from his sideboard, which obviously
make the Ichorid and Loam matchups more challenging, though the main deck
Scrabbling Claws should leave the deck with a bit of lift. |
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