Just here to make a quick post for all of you looking for the latest hot deck to play at your local FNM tonight. Alex Hayne, Pascal Maynard, Noah Long, Dan Lanthier and David Caplan all stayed together during GP San Diego. While there, they were testing Standard in preparation for Worlds. Alex liked what he saw when he looked over Jonathan Sudenik’s most recent Mono Red list and the team was able to tweak that particular list to its current form:
UPDATE: Wizards decided to do a video deck tech on the Mono Red list
[deck title=Mono Red by David Caplan (6-0)]
[Lands]
21 Mountain
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Chandra’s Phoenix
4 Goblin Fireslinger
3 Grim Lavamancer
1 Spikeshot Elder
4 Stormblood Berserker
4 Stromkirk Noble
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
2 Arc Trail
3 Galvanic Blast
4 Gut Shot
2 Incinerate
4 Shrine of Burning Rage
4 Volt Charge
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
2 Arc Trail
4 Dismember
2 Koth of the Hammer
1 Manic Vandal
2 Traitorous Blood
4 Vulshok Refugee
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
Caplan finished 6-0 before going 3-1 with the deck in the Magic Online Championship. Noah and Marc Anderson managed to go 4-2 with it, giving the Mono Red deck an impressive record of 17-5 (77%) on the day! Noah would like to mention that he felt the deck was REALLY powerful and that he could have easily been 6-0.
Alex, however, could not get the cards together to make a copy of the deck, so he had to settle for Illusions which he took to a 4-2 Day 1 finish. He said he would have definitely played Mono Red if he had the choice. Lanthier also ended up playing Illusions, but he actually liked the Blue deck more and managed to finish the day at 3-2-1.
PMayne, on the other hand, did not qualify for Worlds. He was missing one Pro Point, but lost in the last round to Conley Woods at GP San Diego. It was an all or nothing match for him that ultimately ended up being a devastating heart breaker.
Marcel Angelo Zafra went on a tangent from the core Canadian team and decided to play something that I personally recommended to him. I had mentioned on the Eh Team that maybe the best deck in the format is the best [card]Delver of Secrets[/card] deck. I shipped Marcel the following list that I had found and toyed with:
[deck title=UW Blade by Kar Yung Tom]
[Lands]
10 Island
4 Seachrome Coast
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Inkmoth Nexus
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
4 Delver of Secrets
4 Snapcaster Mage
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
4 Vapor Snag
4 Ponder
3 Gut Shot
4 Mana Leak
3 Psychic Barrier
3 Negate
4 Midnight Haunting
3 Sword of Feast and Famine
2 Dissipate
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
2 Surgical Extraction
3 Ratchet Bomb
2 Divine Offering
1 Phantasmal Image
1 Spellskite
3 Timely Reinforcements
2 Dismember
1 Batterskull
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
I do not have Marcel’s final list, but boy was I worried that he would yell at me when I saw that he started off 0-2. Lucky for me, he finished the day 4-2. From my limited testing with the deck, I felt it was a solid deck, but maybe not powerful enough.
Seeing as how Marcel was a Caw-Blade player, the look of this deck was probably enough to get him to play it. The fact that a similar copy of the deck finished in the top 16 of GP Hiroshima also reinforced the idea that the deck might be legit. When asked why he was playing this over Illusions, Marcel said that he wanted his Delvers to flip and they never flipped for him while he was testing Illusions.
The only Canadian left to mention is the country’s most known active player in Rich Hoaen. According to Caplan, Hoaen ended up choosing the RG Wolf Run deck that Caplan and Noah had been working on that featured 4 [card]Arc Trail[/card]s and 4 [card]Inferno Titan[/card]s in order to be able to deal with those pesky [card]Mirran Crusader[/card]s. Maybe that’s the direction to take the Wolf Run archetype from now on as Jun’ya Iyanaga was able to finish Day 1 undefeated with the same 8 cards in his main deck.
[deck title=RG Wolf Run by Jun’ya Iyanaga (6-0)]
[Lands]
4 Copperline Gorge
5 Forest
4 Inkmoth Nexus
3 Kessig Wolf Run
6 Mountain
4 Rootbound Crag
[/Lands]
[Creatures]
1 Birds of Paradise
4 Inferno Titan
4 Primeval Titan
4 Solemn Simulacrum
1 Thrun, the Last Troll
[/Creatures]
[Spells]
2 Devil’s Play
4 Galvanic Blast
2 Green Sun’s Zenith
4 Rampant Growth
1 Shock
3 Slagstorm
4 Sphere of the Suns
[/Spells]
[Sideboard]
2 Ancient Grudge
4 Autumn’s Veil
1 Beast Within
1 Slagstorm
2 Sword of Feast and Famine
2 Thrun, the Last Troll
2 Tree of Redemption
1 Viridian Corrupter
[/Sideboard]
[/deck]
Have a good one guys,
KYT
Kar Yung Tom (KYT) is the Digital Content Manager for Face to Face Games. He oversees the F2FTour.com and Magic F2F websites. He is also the lead host of the First Strike podcast.
