MystikDuck, a man with a light-hearted touch to competitive gaming and deck nomenclature, stormed through a field full of Extended mainstays to come out on top piloting a deck full of creatures with protection from… something. “Nom Nom” refers to the ferocious nibbling of his bevy of beatsticks, and Naya tells us something else entirely: the Duck did it with green. Without blue.

I had mistakenly thought Guardian of the Guildpact past his prime due to the prevalence of Unmake, Terminate, and Agony Warp. However, 3 Sigil of the Nayan Gods and 2 Shield of the Oversoul later, the pro-mono tank doesn’t seem so bad. Let’s take a look at the list entire:

(By the way Sandwichdan, raebae13, and Boin: Verify your Gatherling accounts!)

This deck is a tasty morsel, no? Wild Nacatl reaches his full potential as a 3/3 here. We also have a host of other 2/2s, 2/3s, and 3/2s, most of which have shroud or some other form of protection. Qasali Pridemage is quite the creature, granting an exalted +1/+1 bonus to any of the protection guys if they attack alone, serving as a Naturalize on legs to ramp up the creature count for Sigil, and serving as his own sacrifice outlet to force the opponent to waste removal. A full playset of Manamorphose seems a little out of place in an aggro deck, but it is early color-fixing and cantrips into business, helping make the early turns count. (Same with Sigil’s cycling option.)

An ample collection of assorted burns to round out the maindeck. The board is pretty straightforward; the one question mark is Marshaling Cry, though that presumably comes in against combo and other removal-light decks.

His one loss was against Teachings, which has grabbed hold of the metagame firmly and refuses to let go. This could be troubling; one way to stop creatures with protection is never to let them enter the battlefield. MUTC is good at that with its wall of counterspells. Nevertheless, this Naya deck has the muscle and the resilience to power through much of what the current metagame throws at it.

Now let’s take a trip back to last week, XPDC 6.10, shall we? The finals table there pitted a long-time staple of the Pauper Extended metagame, Orzhov Blink, against a home-brewed Allies-Changelings-Rebels concoction. I bore witness to the horrible mana screw that ended Orzhov’s ascent; a lack of black on the table prevented plateddragon from playing the two Doom Blades that would have disrupted the early Rebel engine Squirrelrevolution had on the board. The game could have gone much differently had the mana not been a factor.

I certainly don’t mean to diminish Squirrelrevolution’s victory. The fact that his fragile deck made it to the finals table is a testament to his playskill. However, I believe that Allied Rebels, as an archetype, is not resilient enough to withstand the constant assault of creature removal that plagues this format. Perhaps it, like Spore Cry of old (which no one plays anymore, and possibly for good reason), was able to foil its opponents simply by virtue of being unknown. Rogue decks have that element of surprise, and Squirrelrevolution was able to tap into that (although, he did come in 2nd place the previous week, XPDC 6.09, with a very similar list, so maybe we should have seen it coming…)

There is a bit more Orzhov Blink being played, pretty much on par with the amount of Cogs and Stripes and Parlor Tricks we’re seeing. The metagame is skewed slightly toward MUTC (and other Grixis-y control decks) now because it is such a powerful deck in a metagame choked with ETB creatures. There is also quite a bit more aggro than I realized. At least two players today attempted to put Clout of the Dominus to good use. I was schooled by a tight White Weenie build. I was playing Gruul Beats, a deck which I believe has major potential. The metagame is exciting and fresh and, as new clanmate jaknife pointed out, it’s extremely difficult to metagame right now in Pauper Extended because there are so many powerful strategies with no clear format dominators. Just how Magic should be.

Next week is Easter Sunday and XPDC will be on break. We’ll come back on Sunday, April 11, fresh and resurrected with plenty of new format-storming deck ideas for XPDC 6.12. Meanwhile, build and test! I’ll see you in /join PDC!