Danny Jessup @ SCG 04.09.13

29 lands; three creatures, all of them 1/3s; no way to win the game but the activated ability of a land that comes into play tapped and requires you to have ten other specific lands in play. Danny Jessup is a madman looking to navigate to the Maze's End!


What we have here is essentially the marriage of a Turbo Fog deck, which tries to cast fog effects every turn in an attempt to lock their opponents out of the game, with an alternate win condition combo-control deck utilizing Maze's End. This deck is going to use its fogs to buy as much time as possible while occasionally clearing the board with Supreme Verdict and blocking with Auger of Bolas. Urban Evolution is the perfect card for this deck, as it allows you to draw more fog effects while also letting you get more Gates into play faster.


This deck also makes fantastic use of the M14 rare Into the Wilds, as this is a deck that was to get as many lands in play as possible and stall for as long as possible. This means that Into the Wilds will be triggering many times over many turns, and with 29 lands in the deck, it will hit just a house edge under 50% of the time. Between Into the Wild and Urban Evolution, this deck can certainly kill a lot faster than you would think! Dan's deck is exciting because it attacks the format from a completely different angle than most decks.

Thumbs Up
Why Are We Building This Deck?

So as we said before, when it comes to deckbuilding . . .

(Whole crowd chants in unison.)

CONTEXT. IS. EVERYTHING!

And context is one of the most interesting things about Dan's deck. Standard right now is a midranger's paradise, as there are so many powerful midrange cards and strategies that they have for the most part dominated. And what is natural predator to a midrange deck?

(For a tense moment, the crowd expectantly awaits an answer.)

Combo decks! Midrange decks typically excel when there is no combo deck present in the format. Midrange decks beat the smaller aggressive decks by going "bigger" than them—that is, matching their inexpensive quick threats with slightly larger and more powerful/resilient threats (think Huntmaster of the Fells and Thragtusk) backed up by cheap spot removal spells. They beat control decks by presenting many of these powerful midgame threats and trying to overwhelm them before the late game.

Combo decks are immune to both of these. While this deck is not a typical combo deck in the vein of assemble these two cards and kill you on the spot, it possesses many of the same aspects. This combo-control deck is completely uninterested in what your opponent is doing beyond fogging the attack step. It doesn't care about life totals or board presence, blanks many of your opponents' cards (such as removal spells), and possesses extreme inevitability.

Midrange decks typically can't apply enough pressure to combo decks to kill them before they can assemble their combo. This makes the prospect of playing a combo deck in this format an excellent one, as you will be able to pray on the myriad of midrange decks relying on slow, expensive creatures like Thragtusk and Olivia Voldaren to win the game. They can gain all the life they want off of Thragtusk and Huntmaster of the Fells and can have all the creature removal in the world, but it's not going to help them at all.

Having a combo-control deck based around a land also gives you excellent inevitability against long-game control decks like U/W/R Flash and U/W Control, as they have no real way to interact with Maze's End itself.

The big question: is the combo fast enough to beat the aggressive decks of the format? And is it consistent enough to fight through the midrange decks as well?

Shrug
This is difficult to answer. This is not a fast combo deck. It's not like Splinter Twin combo or Storm combo where it can just win out of nowhere.

This can make things very hard for it against an aggressive deck that is going to present an extreme amount of pressure. The deck needs time to set up and cast its enchantments and card draw spells, and of course the deck possesses the very difficult drawback of having most of its lands come into play tapped.

I think this is the reason for—and why I like—the inclusion of both Auger of Bolas and Supreme Verdict in the deck. Sometimes you are just going to need to stall and play catch up, and you can't fog every single turn.

This deck looks like it would have a lot of trouble with Mono-Red and R/G Aggro, as not only do they present very fast clocks but they also have the damage from Hellrider, burn spells, and worst of all Burning Earth. However, it also looks like it would fare very well against the midrange and control decks of the format. This seems like a deck that wants to sneak up on the format when the time is right.

Arms Crossed
Competitive or Fun?

One thing is for sure—this deck looks like an absolute blast to play. From peeking at your top card every turn and getting to play it for free to blanking all of your opponent's removal and Thragtusks to getting to win the game regardless of your opponent's board state, this deck seems like a rowdy good time.