MTG Salvation

Arabian Nights

Overview: Arabian Nights, though the first and smallest stand-alone set in the Magic multiverse, packs an impressive punch which stems mainly from the fact that (I’m assuming) Wizards didn’t understand how to properly cost creatures with drawbacks back in the day. Serendib Efreet is probably the most striking example of this inherent power discrepancy, where a 3/4 flying body for 3 mana is “counterbalanced” by a meager 1 life payment per turn. Juzam Djinn and Serendib Djinn are other good examples of this. Though the general fluidity, curve and power of the deck is impressive, the feather in Arabian Nights’ cap is the ability to overwhelm an opponent via the card-drawing brokenness of Library of Alexandria. In a tournament where nothing is banned or restricted, having access to a limitless amount of card advantage will invariably swing even poor matchups to your favor, allowing you to submerge your opponent in a sea of drastically undercosted, evasive creatures.

Power Cards: Serendib Efreet, Juzam Djinn and Library of Alexandria

Weaknesses: This deck isn’t very versatile. Even with the card drawing of Library, Arabian Nights can be outworked by decks that can beat AN to the punch, or exploit its lack of utility (see Visions or Tempest). As Ravinca and Judgment showed in the last two tournaments, even with it’ plethora of cheap, oversized creatures, faster decks with the ability to add damage up quickly can punish Nights for having creatures that require a life investment.

Grade: B

Antiquities

Overview: Where to begin? Antiquities, simply put, is the most dominating deck in the BotS universe, boasting the best win record and the tournament’s most powerful card: Mishra’s Workshop. Antiquites is not only one of the fastest decks, (with Mirrodin’s Affinity menace being the only other real contender) but also one of the most resilient, with tons of ways of bouncing back from removal or winning even after falling behind in board position to an opponent. This deck’s true power, much like Mirrodin’s Affinity deck, rests in its lands. Not having to worry about trivial things like “colored mana”, Antiquites can use its lands to generate obscene amounts of mana, destroy your lands, or even swing for the win. With the large amount of mana it can generate, Antiquities can afford to run a curve which starts at 3, which, when the mana is available, virtually guarantees that its threats will be much larger than what an opponent is usually used to dealing with. Antiquities is the Battle of the Sets equivalent of the New York Yankees or Manchester United; everyone complains about the deck's dominance and seeming invincibility when it executes its gameplan, which is terrible if you hate the set, sublime if you're a fan.

Power Cards: Strip Mine, Tron, Workshop and Triskelion

Weaknesses: This deck has a habit of beating itself. While it may seem beneficial to abuse Workshop by running higher CC cards than usual, this deck starts to suck big time when its cornerstone card doesn’t show up. Onulet on turn 3 is much less appealing than Onulet on turn 1, and thus this deck is prone to mulliganing aggressively to find the right combination of Workshop and/or Tron. This means that Antiquities can outright lose by mulliganing into hands that have 0 chance of beating a competitive opponent.

Grade: A+

Legends

Overview: Like most of the earlier sets, the power of Legends originates from design mistakes on the part of Wizards, who, in most of the earlier sets allowed cards far above the power curve to be printed. Legends, while not fast or versatile, has the advantage of running blatantly unfair cards like Moat, Land Tax and against some decks, Greater Realm of Preservation. Against many decks, after a Moat or Greater Realm is resolved, there is simply nowhere to go, allowing Legends to triumph over more one-dimensional opponents. Greater Realm and Moat may be great cards and effective lock pieces, but Land Tax is probably the deck’s MVP due to its deck thinning qualities, as well as its savage interaction with Land’s Edge, which can end the game very quickly against a stunned opponent. With these four cards as the deck’s shell, the rest of the deck is made up of burn, win conditions and removal, with Firestorm Phoenix and The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale being the cards that most stand out in these categories.

Power Cards: Moat, Land Tax, Greater Realm and The Tabernacle at Pendrell Vale

Weaknesses: The cracks are beginning to show in Legends’ once formidable armor. If Red/Black aggro decks with no flying creatures had a lock on the metagame, Legends would be the king of the heap. This however, is not the case, as Moat and GRoP are quickly becoming less and less relevant due to a combination of factors: decks with ways to remove these troublesome permanents or decks with a way to finish the damage race even after the lock pieces are dropped, or in some cases, both. Legends is therefore a very matchup-oriented deck.

Grade: B-

The Dark

Overview: Oh, poor, poor The Dark. It must be a very unhappy set, when it looks up and sees decks that actually have a chance to compete, and then realizes that there is no conceivable way of getting better, save a decision by Wizards to re-release the set with actual good cards in it. The problem is simply that the card quality between Legends and The Dark took a nose dive, and The Dark has very, very few cards with any level of power, resulting in a deck that is cobbled together using the scraps of halfway decent cards that The Dark has available to it. The prior incarnation was a red deck that offered very little in terms of consistency or speed, and the current version is designed to beat slower aggro decks using various utility creatures, Barl’s Cage and Maze of Ith. Though it is truly a terrible deck and set, it does have a place within the BotS universe, namely the play-in division, which is usually a hoot.

“Power” Cards: Preacher, Barl’s Cage, Maze of Ith

Weaknesses: The Dark is in a constant struggle not to be known as the worst deck and set in BotS, and usually contends with Homelands and Fallen Empires for that dubious distinction. It’s usually a bad sign that The Dark’s current deck was made for the express purpose of beating these two decks, as well as Weatherlight, another perennial loser.

Grade: F

Fallen Empires

Overview: Well, speak of the devil! Fallen Empires, much like The Dark is mired in a swamp of mediocre misery, and while not as abjectly terrible as The Dark, it still manages to suck the big one. Unlike The Dark, Fallen Empires has some legitimately good cards in Hymn to Tourach, Derelor, Aeolipile and Order of the Ebon Hand. The rest of the deck is the problem, which is just a pretty below-par tribal deck. The gameplan is essentially the same for each game: 1) Pray to the Magic gods to draw multiple Hymns in the opening hand, 2) Play dudes and start swinging. Not that much to it.

Power Cards: Hymn, Order of the Ebon Hand and Derelor

Weaknesses: Good decks.

Grade: D-

Ice Age

Overview: Continuing with the trend of sad-sack sets, Ice Age is a riddle wrapped in an enigma, and the riddle just turned out to be a bad joke. Eliminated in the first round of every single BotS, Ice Age has been through multiple revisions and proposed deck ideas, from GR Aggro to Mono Black Necro-Aggro to Pox and finally settling on its current decklist, which believe-you-me is far and away the best deck that Ice Age could ever hope to field. The lack of good finishers combined with an overall poor card pool has stopped Ice Age from competing with the big boys, even with the totally broken card drawing machine that is Necropotence.

NecroHaups, as it has been dubbed, is actually a rather strong deck that has a chance against many decks if it can get its engine going. It's main way of dealing with opponents is a mid-game combo of sorts which consists of casting Necro and Zuran Orb then following up with a Jokulhaups and sacrificing all of its lands. Necro then recoups the cards that were lost in this exchange and the game begins all over again, except Ice Age’s opponent has “mulliganed” several times, while Ice Age begins with the powerful enchantment in play and a fist full of cards. It then begins to beat its opponent’s head in with Abyssal Specter and Foul Familiar. One of the best plays against many decks is to get a turn 2 (or after a Jokulhaups) Abyssal Specter via Dark Ritual, which really compliments Ice Age’s main plan of Jokulhaupsing later on in the game by pecking into an opponent’s hand, and forcing them to overextend into the ‘Haups. It also has some board control elements in Dark Banishing and Incinerate.

Power Cards: Necropotence, Abyssal Specter, Jokulhaups

Weaknesses: Two things have prevented Ice Age from entering the second round: Bad matchups and plain, old fashioned bad luck. Ice Age has been on the edge many different times, finding a way to lose games that seemed like they were within reach, for example, in BotS 6, Onslaught’s Slide/Rift deck topdecked the one mana cycling spell that it needed in order to win the pivotal game. Also, on top of the bad luck, there are some absolutely horrendous matchups, like Judgment, which has the ability to make Ice Age look silly with stuff like Anurid Brushopper and Ray of Revelation, backed by a solid cast of beats.

Grade: C

Homelands

Overview: I like Homelands. I like the flavor, I liked the comics, and I also kind of liked the artwork and the cards too. That doesn’t stop it from probably being arguably one of the worst sets ever. On the bright side, it isn’t The Dark, and it has some pretty favorable matchups in the play-in division. The basic idea behind Homelands is to gum up the board early in the game with Bears, assorted weenies and Roots while building up mana. In the midgame, it can start to win through the air using Abbey Gargoyles and Leaping Lizards, or gain board advantage with the very useful Serrated Arrows. On top of this, it can outclass smaller creatures with the still relatively powerful Autumn Willow. It’s a straightforward beats deck, and is a blast to play with. If you love semi-casual theme decks, I would suggest playing this one against friends.

“Power” Cards: Roots, Abbey Gargoyles, Serrated Arrows and Autumn Willow

Weaknesses: Decks with good cards in them. Pretty much any deck that can stop an underpowered, slow midgame beats deck.

Grade: F

Alliances

Overview: Alliances is a very tricky deck. It isn’t terribly powerful, in that it can be beaten by a majority of the decks in the field, however, it is the penultimate metagame deck. Alliances’ basic game plan is to eliminate smaller creatures with pinpoint removal, lay down something with a large power and start hitting, trying to clear things out of the way to ensure that things like Deadly Insect connect with the dome. Because it fares poorly against a good deal of the field, it is usually seeded in the bottom tier, playing against the best decks in the format. While this may seem like a disadvantage at first, it only plays to Alliances’ strengths. If you look at the seedings of this and the last tournament, you will notice something about a lot of the higher seeds: Darksteel, Mirrodin, Antiquities, Urza’s Saga and Visions all use an artifact or artifacts as their main win conditions. Armed with the potentially devastating Primitive Justice and to a lesser extent Pillage, Alliances can savage an opponent who relies on Artifacts, gaining massive card advantage, while piling on some (literally) high-powered beats. However, if Alliances gets paired with, I don’t know, Torment, it’s going to get its ass handed to it in a box with a pretty pink ribbon on it.

Power Cards: Primitive Justice, Pillage, Balduvian Horde and Yavimaya Ants

Weaknesses: Decks with a good amount of larger creatures that can avoid being removed via Death Spark or Guerilla Tactics. If the match goes on long enough, card disadvantage created by Balduvian Horde, Pyrokinesis and Yavimaya Ants will start to catch up with Alliances, and the 1-for-1 trades will start to work in the opponent’s favor. Also, decks that are good at controlling creatures should be able to weather the early storm and defeat Alliances when it runs out of steam.

Grade: C+

Mirage

Overview: For a while, in tournaments before the last one, Mirage seemed to be on a gradual slide into the basement. Armed with a mono-red burn deck, Mirage was getting outclassed by the newer blazing fast aggro decks, as well as dedicated control decks which seemed to be tailor made to beat Mirage’s narrow attack. The solution came through a subtle face lift to the deck, where a splash of green ended Mirage’s winter of discontent, and brought about a springtime filled with new opportunity. Green added two things: acceleration in the form of Wall of Roots and Rampant Growth and the aggro-crushing might of Savage Twister. The added acceleration of Growth and Wall of Roots allowed Mirage to bounce top-seeded Tempest in BotS 7 by increasing the speed at which it could crank out Volcanic Dragons and Wildfire Emmisaries, as well as increasing the speed at which it could cast and recur Hammer of Bogardan. This last part was critical, because if Mirage was too slow in getting to Hammer recursion mana, Tempest would simply capsize-lock Mirage out of the game, which was what happened in the previous meeting between the two sides.

While the direct burn approach is most effective against control decks, other cards are more effective against aggro decks. For instance, Savage Twister gives Mirage an out to fast swarm decks like Affinity, Legions and Invasion, and the Walls keep the life points high, and force decks to overcommit to the board in order to get around it, setting up, you guessed it, Savage Twister. The mana acceleration also makes Mirage’s best threats even stronger: making Hammer, Torch and Dragon come out faster, and deal more damage. The prospect of a turn 4 4/4 hasty flyer isn’t something that the other decks in this tournament take lightly.

Power Cards: Savage Twister, Hammer of Bogardan, Volcanic Dragon and the 2 CC acceleration

Weaknesses: Mirage, though it has some relatively powerful cards, and a coherent strategy that can punish certain decks, sometimes it can simply get outclassed. The last go-around, Mirage was ousted by Ravinca, due to its ability to add up damage quickly, put creatures out of burn range with pump and use effective burn spells to finish the job. The tournament before that, Mirage simply had no answer to Darksteel’s rapidly growing mechanical monsters, and massive card advantage. Mirage also gets beaten by decks that have a way of stopping its damage suite like Mercadian Masques’ Story Circle and Pro: Red, or decks that don’t really play into Mirage’s game, like Visions or Urza’s Saga. Mirage also loses to decks that can get the jump on it early and maintain the pressure, or decks that can generate hideous amounts of card advantage to overwhelm it, a la Arabian Nights.

Grade: C+

Visions

Overview: Visions is one of the most interesting decks in the tournament. It started its BotS life as a below-average UG aggro deck, then moved to a BG aggro deck, until it finally found it’s current incarnation as a lightning-quick lock deck. For those of you who don’t know how it works, Equipoise phases out artifacts, creatures and lands an opponent controls during Visions' upkeep in excess of the number it controls, and usually those permanents phase back in during the opponent’s untap step. When Sands of Time is in play you skip your untap step, and when they are both on the board at the same time, those permanents never phase back in, until Sands of Time is removed. Because Visions has no creatures, during each of its upkeeps it can remove all of an opponent’s creatures, or any land or artifact in excess of the amount Visions controls. This usually means an opponent is stuck at 4 lands, 0 creatures, and 1-2 artifacts, depending on whether Wand of Denial is in play.

The best thing about Visions is the sheer speed at which it can clamp an opponent under its lock, using effective tutors like Impulse and Vampiric Tutor on the first two turns, laying Equipoise down on the third turn, then windmill slamming Sands of Time onto the table turn 4 for the lock, and if the game isn’t decided by that point, it can totally seal up the game by playing Forbidden Ritual and sacrificing all of its lands to ensure that all of the opponent’s lands will disappear on the next turn. It illustrated it’s speed by beating Mirrodin’s blazing fast Affinity deck in 4 games in BotS 6, followed by ousting Darksteel in the next round. Visions also has some solid disruption in the form of Vision Charm, which is the Swiss Army Knife of the deck: it is the deck’s win condition, ensuring that an opponent will be decked before you, it protects Sands of Time from removal by phasing it out temporarily, or it can phase out opponent’s artifacts temporarily, or permanently when Sands of time is in play. Vision Charm can also stop Visions’ lock pieces from being countered by casting it in the first main phase, changing islands into mountains until the end of the turn, declare your attack to prevent mana floating, and cast your lock piece unhindered in the second main phase, and it slices and dices all your vegetables to boot! Coercion prevents decks from holding on to relevant disruption, Wand of Denial stops them from topdecking lock removal and Peace Talks buys extra turns in which to establish the lock against aggro decks.

Power Cards: Equipoise, Sands of Time, Vampiric Tutor and Vision Charm

Weaknesses: There are a couple of weaknesses for Visions’ deck. The most problematic of these is the tendency for Visions to beat itself by not drawing into its lock pieces, which is more of a problem against decks that have a fast clock. Mulliganing often solves this problem, but sometimes Visions can simply lose a game due to its inability to find, resolve and keep its lock pieces in play. There are some other problems Visions has, and most can be boiled down to things that can beat Visions even after the lock is in place, like manlands, burn and instant-speed/hasty creatures. In matchups where these cards are present, Visions needs to get the hard lock AKA Forbidden Ritual, or use Vision Charm to get rid of artifact manlands ASAP.

Grade: A

Weatherlight

Overview: Weatherlight, like many decks that were performing poorly, was spruced up a bit to start the last tournament. Changing from a UW skies deck that relied on Empyrial Armor and Serenity to be any good at all, Weatherlight is now a speedy Suicide Black deck. Though I feel the deck has been improved, Weatherlight is still one of the worst decks in BotS, because, though fast and streamlined, it relies on card disadvantage to get and keep its threats in play. Straw Golem, Hidden Horror, Circling Vultures, Buried Alive and Barrow Ghoul, though incredible for their mana cost and have great synergy with one another are all potentially card disadvantage, and other decks can exploit this. However, early in the game, Weatherlight is one fearsome deck; Barrow Ghouls can be employed second turn via a pitched Circling Vultures or a dead Straw Golem, and sustained with Hidden Horror or Buried Alive. Straw Golem can easily be 4 points to the dome, and evasive critters like Fledgling Djinn and Razortooth Rats can continue to beat face, even if WL’s opponent has established its board position. If this first assault on an opponent is unsuccessful at killing them Weatherlight can finish things off by dropping one of its deliciously evil finishers: Gallowbraid or the bloodthirsty Morinfen. Weatherlight is also one of my personal favourites to play with, because it’s such a silly deck.

Power Cards: Hidden Horror, Barrow Ghoul, Morinfen and Gallowbraid

Weaknesses: Ironically, as it has been demoted to the play-in division, Weatherlight is probably worse off than it would be if it were to enter the normal tournament, because every deck other than Fallen Empires seems to have Weatherlight’s number. Spectral Bears are drawbackless in Homelands, and Death Speakers/Abbey Matron take a sloppy dump all over Weatherlight’s plan to beat down with cheap 4/4s. To top it all off, Abbey Gargoyles + Serrated Arrows beats Weatherlight’s usual trump card of Morinfen. Against The Dark, Exorcist, Preacher, Barl’s Cage and Maze of Ith are a total nightmare, and if even one of these cards resolves (without Biskelion support), you will probably lose the game.

Grade: D+

Tempest

Overview: Ah, Tempest my love! Not only one of my favorite sets ever, UW Control is also one of my favorite deck types ever! Many people have inquired why Tempest did not opt to go with a RDW strategy, with cards like Jackal Pup, Fireslinger and Mogg Fanatic. The answer is pretty simple, firstly, there isn’t really any good cheap burn in Tempest that could clear a hole for your creatures to get through, secondly, there are a lot of decks that prey on creature decks in particular and would gobble RDW up, thirdly, Wasteland sucks in a format where almost every deck is made up almost entirely of basic lands and finally, the UW control strategy implemented by Tempest is extremely powerful and versatile. Tempest is essentially a lock deck which uses Humility combined with Orim’s Prayer to make an opponent’s attack phase completely useless (except for equipment, pump enchantments and now manlands), Humility also effectively makes most creature text boxes blank, which comes in handy more often than you would think. Other than these two cards, Tempest is a mono blue deck, which uses counterspells, Whispers of the Muse, Capsize and Sapphire Medallion to maintain control of the game. The win condition is more of an afterthought, and only starts to work after control has been guaranteed through all of the aforementioned cards. Tempest, due to it’s inclusion of the lock, is one of the premier decks in the whole format seeing as only it, Visions and Urza’s Saga win without using the attack step. Also, another key factor to its success is that it includes counterspells, which makes it difficult for decks to escape the lock even if they have enchantment removal.

Power Cards: Humility, Orim’s Prayer, Capsize and Counterspell

Weaknesses: There are a few bad to even matchups that Tempest has to worry about, and these include decks that are fast coming out of the gate, seeing as it cannot employ the lock as fast or as consistently as Visions, and can also fall prey to decks that have some sort of reach, or equipment that pumps creatures larger than Orim’s Prayer can negate.

Grade: A

Stronghold

Overview: Stronghold is another deck that was blessed with a change from its prior incarnation into a much better deck. Originally it was a G/W deck that was about as ordinary as you can get, and now it is a more powerful, though slightly bizarre control/combo deck. The point of the deck is to get Dream Halls into play, and then power out overcosted creatures and effects like Sliver Queen, Flowstone Mauler and Flame Wave for free. One of the most interesting parts of the deck is that you can constantly recur Shard Phoenix from the grave in order to pay for these effects, and Shard Phoenix is great on its own, acting as an infinite Pyroclasm or chump blocker. The ideal scenario for the deck would be to open with a land and a Mox, and hit with a third turn set-up Sift followed by a fourth turn Dream Halls to play whichever card is the most relevant to the matchup. Sift is one of the most important spells in the deck, because it can be cast one turn before playing Dream Halls, which gives you another opportunity to find it should it not be in your opening grip.

Power Cards: Dream Halls, Sift, Sliver Queen and Shard Pheonix

Weaknesses: Though it has some countermagic, Stronghold is vulnerable to removal, especially enchantment removal on Dream Halls. It is also pretty inconsistent, due to there being only one true search spell in the deck.

Grade: C

Exodus

Overview: Exodus is primarily a lock deck. Its game plan is to gum up the ground with silly little creatures like Pygmy Troll and Wood Elves, and then drop Survival of the Fittest. Once Survival is in play, Exodus starts filling up it’s graveyard and fetching game-breaking cards like Thrull Surgeon, Keeper of the Dead and Spike Weaver. Spike Weaver locks up the attack phase, and gives some time for Exodus to draw into either Oath of Ghouls or Recurring Nightmare, Oath providing limitless Surgeon activations or Weaver recursions while Recurring Nightmare allows Exodus to bring out Pit Spawn or Thopter Squadrons. Usually all of the win condition fetching is academic, because most decks concede when they are locked out of an attack phase and facing the specter of millions of terrible creatures poking them to death.

Power Cards: Recurring Nightmare, Spike Weaver, Survival of the Fittest and Oath of Ghouls

Weaknesses: Really fast decks can beat Exodus regardless of Weaver, and many times, opponents can use removal before Exodus’ end step targeting Weaver so that it can force lethal damage through. On top of this, Exodus has no non-creature removal, which means that if there is a troublesome artifact, enchantment or land in play, Exodus doesn’t have any answer.

Grade: B+

Urza’s Saga

Overview: Hoooooooo boy. Because of the change that I made between BotS 7 and this tournament, Urza’s Saga has been transformed into a total combo deck that has an average goldfish of turn 5. This is obviously incredibly degenerate for this format, because the only other deck that has a goldfish that fast is Mirrodin, and that deck relies on creatures i.e. much easier to deal with. The point of this deck is pretty simple, drop artifacts, cycle cards with Fluctuator, draw 7, turnabout a whole bunch, drop more artifacts, make a ton of mana and stroke your opponent out. Yikes!

Power Cards: Tolarian Academy, Time Spiral, Artifacts and Windfall

Weaknesses: Decks with a lot of relevant disruption, and Affinity. Affinity is simply too fast for even Saga's busted deck, and barring a Saga god-hand, it would get run out of the building. Other decks, with good disruption and fast clocks have a chance against Saga, like Visions phasing out all of it's artifacts, Antiquities with Strip Mine and quick draws and worst of all, Alliances with Primitive Justice, Pillage and Guerilla Tactics (Windfall).

Grade: A+

Urza’s Legacy

Overview: Although far less broken that it’s block brother Saga, Legacy has an interesting and reasonably powerful UG pump skies deck. Blue supplies the evasive guys, and green supplies the steroids. Rancor and Might of Oaks make little blue fliers into much, much larger threats, leaving an opponent's creatures staring upwards as giant, Mark McGuire sized faeries sail over their heads. Also, another key part of this deck is the inclusion of 8 manlands. Though they come into play tapped, they allow the deck to make its mana base work to its advantage, and allow it to run a higher threat density than would normally be possible due to mana constraints. Miscalculation affords the deck some permission, which adds another element to its game plan.

Power Cards: Rancor, Cloud of Faeries, Might of Oaks and Treetop Village

Weaknesses: Though this deck has an interesting strategy, Legacy’s plan of chumping on the ground and beating through the air can be beaten by decks that can race it, or decks that can have a way of handling blue 1 power flying creatures. Legacy has the capability to surprise opponents with quick starts, but many times it will become apparent that Legacy’s power level is just not in the same league as many of the premier decks.

Grade: C+

Urza’s Destiny

Overview: Destiny has proven itself to be one of the better decks in the tournament, and apart from last BotS where it got booted by Invasion in the first round, Destiny has been able to move deeper into the tournament than many people would assume possible from a mono-green control deck. One advantage that Destiny has over many of the multicolored decks in the tournament is that its manabase is all forests, meaning that mulligans are kept to a minimum and it can go about its gameplan of casting big green fatties that even Jamie Wakefield would be proud of. Rofellos is instrumental in fulfilling the deck’s strategy and is single-handedly responsible for turn 4 Thorn Elementals, turn 3 Ancient Silverbacks and feeds the ammo into the gas powered machine gun that is Masticore. Speaking of Masticore, it has synergy not only with Rofellos, but also with Yavimaya Elder, which can restock Destiny’s hand to keep Masticore alive. Plow Under is probably one of the most punishing disruption spells ever printed and in Destiny roughly translates into: “Skip your next two draw phases. Oh, and here’s a 7/7 for you to deal with.” The deck has a simple strategy with a rock solid manabase, which means it is can consistently execute its plan and perform well.

Power Cards: Plow Under, Rofellos, Masticore and Thorn Elemental

Weaknesses: Although Plow Under provides a healthy amount of disruption, the Destiny attack is very one-dimensional, and if a deck can deal with its creatures (especially Rofellos in the early game), is unusually quick or runs relevant disruption, it may have a good chance of beating the green monster. Destiny is also a virtual bye for combo and lock decks, as it is neither fast enough nor disruptive enough to stop either of these types of deck.

Grade: A-

Mercadian Masques:

Overview: As many who played Standard or Block during the Mercadian Masques era surely know, Rebels, the incredibly irritating White Weenie deck, is a force to be reckoned with. Its true power comes from the ability to keep a constant flow of cheap creatures in hand and on the board. The Rebel “chain” as it is called, allows you to play a first turn Ramosian Sergeant, use it to fetch Ramosian Lieutenant, which can then be used to start fetching the Gliders. Gliders are the most effective and irritating creatures in the whole deck, due to their ability to fly over ground-based opponents while a never ending stream of chump blockers gum up the ground.

Aiding the Rebel Alliance are some key support and disruptions cards, such as the extremely effective Rishadan Port and Disenchant filling the role of disruption, while Reverent Mantra and Cho-Manno's Blessing fulfill a variety of roles such as anti-removal, making MM's chump-blockers more effective and increasing the effectiveness of alpha-strikes. Lastly, Masques has a potential game-winner against certain decks: Story Circle. Often, even one Story Circle can spell game against a deck incapable of removing the card, as Masques will eventually will get enough rebels on the board to overwhelm even the most stingy defence.

Power Cards: Ramosian Sergeant, Gliders, Story Circle, Disenchant

Weaknesses: There are no obvious weaknesses to the Masques attack, rather there are certain cards, or combination of cards that can absolutely ruin Masques' day. Take for example the deck above this one, Destiny: if Masticore resolves with regeneration mana available, there is absolutely nothing that Masques can do to stop it from smashing the deck to pieces. The general weakness of Masques' deck are it's creatures, find a way to deal with them or outclass them, and you should be able to take the deck out.

Grade: B+

Nemesis:

Overview: Nemesis hails from the block everyone loathed, and for a while, it was easy to see why. It played a balls-out RG deck that, aside from Blastoderm and Saproling Burst, got its ass handed to it by decks with cards in them. However, things are looking up for Nemesis, because even though it fell through to the play-in bracket in the last go around, its new WG aggro/control deck thoroughly dominated those meager decks and earned it's way to a first round exit vs. Antiquities. Unlike before, the deck now has a pretty solid gameplan: use Tangle Wire, Topple, Fog Patch and Parallax Wave to stall an opponent before it starts dropping it's bombs like Blastoderm, Rhox, Blinding Angel and Saproling Burst. It's a pretty simple, yet effective strategy, because its bombs and disruption are generally pretty good, and for the most part, it's men are bigger and better than what an opponent could manage to get on the board, and even if they aren't, Wave and Topple can remedy that well enough.

Power Cards: Parallax Wave, Blastoderm, Rhox and Saproling Burst

Weaknesses: The gameplan of Nemesis is to beat smaller, faster aggro decks by playing bigger creatures and ways to remove an opponent's creatures. If this deck goes up against a dedicated control, combo or lock deck where its disruption isn't as relevant and its creatures can be dealt with, it's going to get shot down faster than Quagmire at an LPGA luncheon.

Grade: C

Prophecy:

Overview: Let me preface this by saying that this is my least favourite set and deck in the whole tournament both to play with and play against. That's not to say that it's a terrible deck, but rather that the whole mechanic that Wizards pushed for this set was incredibly unfun. To sum it up, Prophecy is a tempo-based deck that uses cards like Veteran Brawlers, Branded Brawlers and Spiketail Hatchling to punish an opponent for tapping out to play spells early in the game, and then casts it's more powerful threats like Chimeric Idol, Scoria Cat and Troublesome Spirit. As the game progresses, and decks are able to deal with Prophecy's threats more easily due to having more lands, it drops Citadel of Pain, which can be devastating if the opposing deck doesn't have a sink to deposit their mana, or simply fears Brawlers becoming active. It has actually beaten some of the premier decks in BotS, including Mirrodin, due to some poor draws from the opposing decks.

Power Cards: Spiketail Hatchling, Chimeric Idol, Troublesome Spirit and Scoria Cat

Weaknesses: Like Ponza decks that attempt to beat an opponent with land destruction, Prophecy can simply fold to opponents with a high-mana hand, and it's threats can be played around pretty easily with patience. Also, it will be beaten if a deck can handle Prophecy's creatures, either with better creatures of their own or a substantial amount of creature kill. It's a swingy deck; it can be beaten by even the most pathetic of opponents if they get a good draw, but it can beat even the most fearsome of opponents if they get a bad draw.

Grade: C

Invasion:

Overview: Invasion comes to BotS equipped with a Machinehead deck. Machinehead was chosen over UWB Control and RG Fires because UWB Control was far too slow to deal with opposing aggro decks, and RG Fires because Fires lacked any truly great creatures that would compliment Fires of Yavimaya. Machinehead is the warm porridge, not too hot and not too cold, its main focus is defeating more controlling decks, even those that are made to beat up on aggro decks. The deck is packed with a ton of discard, starting off with Ravenous Rats and Addle, the deck begins attacking an opponent's hand and continues that assault with the excellent Blazing Specter and caps everything off with Void. The deck also packs a lot of finishing burn, which is what makes it so great against control decks, even the ones that are able to deal with it's creatures. It's a simple formula, disrupt the opponent with discard, lay down some creatures, burn a path for them to hit and finish with Skizzik or burn to the dome.

Power Cards: Blazing Specter, Addle, Skizzik and Void

Weaknesses: Invasion has a hard time dealing with opposing creature decks, especially ones that have creatures too big to burn or simply lots of creatures. Also, discard can become rather limited when decks have a way of drawing out of the hole that it creates. Often the time frame for Invasion's initial assault is relatively short, because if an opponent stabilizes it's board position at a high life total the strategy of burning out an opponent can come up short, and often it will take too long for Pyre Zombie recursion or a kickered Urza's Rage to end the game.

Grade: B

Planeshift:

Overview: Planeshift was recently changed from a UWB Aggro Control deck into a RBG Aggro Control deck. Almost every incarnation of Planeshift seems to be wanting something extra, for example, there is no 2 color combination that has enough good cards to make a solid deck, and any 3 color deck is hamstringed by the virtual necessity of running Mana Cylix to fix mana. RGB seems to be the best possible spin on the color wheel that could possibly be expected from a Planeshift deck, which was basically designed to incorporate the best cards in the set into one deck. The deck is at it's best when combating opposing aggro decks, with Terminate, Flametongue Kavu and a bunch of fat creatures, Planeshift has the ability to take over the game in a relatively short period of time. Shivan Wurm allows for multiple uses of both Flametongue Kavu as well as Thunderscape Battlemage.

Power Cards: Flametogue Kavu, Shivan Wurm, Terminate and Thunderscape Battlemage

Weaknesses: First off, mana can be a big problem for this deck. Even with 24 lands and 4 Mana Cylixes, Planeshift will most definately have to mulligan several times over the course of a match due to not having the correct mana available. Another problem is that even though it's running some objectively powerful cards, Planeshift is essentially running 28 mana sources, which means that it's threat density is low for an aggro deck, which can really hurt it when facing a control opponent. Another big thing is that Planeshift starts to suck big time if there aren't that many targets for it's plethora of removal meaning it's dead-card count starts rising considerably.

Grade: C

Apocalypse:

Overview: Apocalypse is probably one of the most powerful decks in the whole tournament, as it's BWG Junk deck has some of the best control cards ever printed at it's disposal. With Vindicate, Pernicious Deed, Phyrexian Arena, Spiritmonger and so on, the deck essentially built itself, employing a huge manabase to accommodate 3 colors worth of incredible cards. Phyrexian Arena is a superb card which allows Apocalypse outpace decks that trade cards 1 for 1, and allows Apocalypse to quickly find the card that it's looking for. On top of this, Apocalypse has the ability to play the disruptive aggro deck, should the situation require it, using Gerrard's Verdict and Vindicate as disruption while beating down with Lynxes and Spiritmongers. The final blow is often a Desolation Angel, which when cast in a winning position will win you the game virtually every time.

I've heard a lot of complaints about the manabase, and how there are too many lands in the deck, etc. etc. The reason for there being so many lands cards is threefold: the deck requires you to hit a land drop well into your 5th turn virtually every game, the deck needs to support 3 colors consistently, and there are a few cards in the deck that can abuse lots and lots of mana like Death Grasp, Desolation Angel and Phyrexian Arena. It's also been proven to be one of the top 5 decks in the whole tournament, and a lot of this has to do with the fact that's it's damn consistent. Apocalypse was crowned the champion of the very first Battle of the Sets, but has failed to repeat this feat, although it is a perennial contender for the honor.

Power Cards: Vindicate, Phyrexian Arena, Pernicious Deed and Spiritmonger

Weaknesses: Apocalypse has had a problem with faster decks especially when Pernicious Deed fails to make an appearance, though the chump blocking prowess of Spectral Lynx does alleviate this somewhat. Also, there are some bad matchups within the upper tiers of BotS, where Torment has stopped Apocalypse multiple times in it's quest to take home the distinction of best stand-alone set in the Magic universe. Should Torment be eliminated before meeting Apocalypse, it stands a very good chance of winning the whole shebang.

Grade: A+