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I can't help it. I'm a Johnny at heart. I look at formats and I want nothing to do with the best deck, or the deck that beats it. Giving me a three card combo that kicks an opponent in the teeth and leaves him with a bloody smile and I'm as happy as a Phyrexian in an oil-bath. Who cares if a turn 1 Thoughtseize can wreck you? I LIKE living dangerously.
It was with this attitude that I approached the current Extended season. Right now, Extended is like Shangri-La for Johnny. Combo is everywhere; you have Elves, All-In-Red, two different cascade decks, Dark Depths/Hexmage, Punishing Fires/Burnwillows, and Thopter/Sword. Hell, I would even consider Zoo a combo deck, using the age-old Creatures+Burn combo. I began to think about some of the more combo-rific cards in Extended right now. Kiki-Jiki... nah, saw that last season. Wild Pair... fun, but I'm not sure it's even remotely viable. Protean Hulk... well, Through the Breach IS still legal.
I started trying to think about what the most degenerate plays possible could be. Hulk for three Virulent Slivers and the Shadow Sliver? Hulk for a bunch of Hada Freeblades and an Ondu Cleric? Finally my brain hit on going for four Hedron Crabs. Ah, a viable mill strategy, the Holy Grail of Johnny-dom. And then I remembered that Dryad Arbor was printed, and the math started running through my head, "4x4x3... wait, if I add a Sakura-Tribe Elder that's 4x5x3... that's 60. That's the entire deck!" The deck seemed fun and interesting, so I made a couple posts about it on MTGSalvation and asked my friends (T3, or Team T-Town) to take a look. They liked it. They REALLY liked it. They liked it so much, they asked me to remove the posts so they could keep it on the quiet. That night, I built the deck and goldfished it privately online. I was shocked by how easy and fast the combo could be pulled off. In my first 20 games, I had a turn 1 win, three turn 2 wins, seven turn 3 wins, and five turn 4 wins. My average was around turn 3.8. I was very excited. So, throughout the rest of the week, I worked on the deck with Ryan Benford, Glenn Shoeman, and Will Besant to try and find the best cards for the deck and the fastest way to combo.
We named the deck, "The Hulk gets Crabs." It's a delicious double entendre, and it answers the question, "How does your deck win?" "The Hulk gets crabs."
Here's what we came up with and why:
4 Ponder
These cards make the deck hum. Without them, I don't think the deck can be optimal. I decided early on that actual card draw is horrible for this deck. You want to select your cards instead of drawing them, otherwise you wind up with a handful of Arbors or Crabs and the combo dies. Turn 1 Ponder sets you up for the turn 2 or 3 win so well that I can't see running the deck without them. Peer Through Depths has been phenomenal. I would play 12 were it legal. When we saw how great the Peers were, we cut back on the number of actual Protean Hulks in the deck and upped the Summoner's Pact, that way the Peers can grab either "piece" of the combo (something that teammate Glenn Shoeman first suggested). Magma Jet has been fantastic. It gives you some interaction with the board in the early game if you don't have the combo (I used it to kill off Dark Confidants, early Wild Nacatls, and Steppe Lynx), it kills the "problem" creatures (Meddling Mage, Gaddock Teeg, Ethersworn Cannonist, Samurai of the Pale Curtain, Aven Mindscensor), AND it helps you find the combo.
The acceleration package. We initially ran Rite of Flame, but have since switched to Desperate Ritual for two reasons.
- It ensures that the entire acceleration/combo can go off at instant speed, a good way to fight control decks.
- It's arcane, and Splicing Through the Breach on it gave us another way to fight control as well as slip in under a Gaddock Teeg.
The Combo pieces.
The "kill" cards. A lot of criticism for the deck is "what happens if you draw the Crabs/Arbors?" Well, drawing the Crabs really isn't that bad. You just run one out there and drop a land to get the milling going. If you manage to run a Crab out naked on turn 2 and drop a fetch, to mill them for 6, then you've pretty much negated the loss if they kill it. If they don't kill it, then it works just as well if it's already on the board when you go off. Drawing multiple Arbors is the worst (and I auto-mulligan any hand with 2 of them in it), but you have to mulligan aggressively and hope your card selection spells help out. You really only need 1 Elder, but we run it as a two-fer just in case you need to play one out early.
1 Forest
1 Mountain
2 Island
The manabase. We wanted 2 "non-creature" sources of green mana in case we ever need to pay for the Pact.
Other cards we considered (or cards that made their way into the sideboard):
Vendillion Clique: I really loved the Clique (I played them in my sideboard), but I couldn't find a cut I could make that would justify them in the main. They are great at shuffling your Arbors back into your deck, blocking a Marit Lage to buy you a turn, checking an opponent's hand to make sure the coast is clear for your combo, or taking down a Wild Nacatl, but the main list was too tight.
Early Frost/Gigadrowse: In the control matchup we elected to play this deck like the old Standard Dragonstorm decks. Tap your opponent down at the end of their turn and go off on our turn. We went back and forth over which would be better, but ultimately decided that Early Frost gives you what you want without forcing you to make sub-optimal choices when fetching your mana.
Echoing Truth: To bounce tokens and Leyline of the Void.
Defense Grid: This may be the best way to fight counterspells and Path to Exile prior to turn 4.
Rampaging Baloths: We are still considering adding this as a 1-of win condition.
As far as matchups go:
Scapeshift: I never had a problem with this deck. The Hulk can get crabs faster than they can get Valakut to erupt.
Dredge: Another deck I had no problem with. All the Dredge decks I've played against were byes.
Elves: A flat-out race. Our combo can go off before theirs (and we really don't care if they gain eleventy billion life), but theirs is just as consistent. Magma Jet and Echoing Truth are great in this matchup.
Dark Depths combo: This deck is the best in the format for a reason. It has early disruption that we don't like, as well as a fast combo that's pretty much a win. That said, this isn't a horrible match-up. Thoughtseize sucks, but it doesn't kill the deck. Finding a second piece of the puzzle can be done with little effort thanks to your card selection package. The only spells you have to be careful about are Path (if they splash white), Muddle the Mixture, and any bounce effect they may run. I've won quite a few matches where they tap out to make a 20/20 on turn 2/3 and you just untap and deck them.
Zoo: If they don't draw Path, you should be able to outrace them pretty easily. If they do draw Path (and they haven't tapped out to play dudes), the matchup can be much more difficult. I played three matches against Zoo last week. All three times, I won game 1, as they won't know to hold mana for Path and just start dropping dudes. They may start playing slower in game 2.
How to fight the hate in general:
Path to Exile and Bant Charm are the only cards that really worry me. But, they are beatable. Pick your times to combo off. I won two games against Zoo where my first combo was Pathed, but since my opponent had always held back mana, he had slowed himself down enough that I could draw into the combo for a second time.
Counterspells can be problematic, but Splice is a great way to fight them. Splicing Through the Breach onto a Peer or a Ritual presents them with a "must counterspell" situation while leaving you with a through the Breach in hand to combo off again on your turn. Bringing in Early Frost or Defense Grids from the side can really help against counterspells.
Leyline of the Void: We run the Echoing Truths for this card.
Extirpate, Cranial Extraction, and Thought Hemorrhage: Depending on what combo piece they name, this can be difficult to beat. Fortunately, they cost 4 mana. It is with these cards in mind that we thought about adding Rampaging Baloths to the main or side.
Is this deck going to be a format wrecker? No. It has weaknesses like every other deck, and if determined, it can be disrupted. I think it has a couple good PTQ's in it. An early one, while it's still lightly regarded, and (if it is successful) a later one, when the hates died down. It's like affinity in that regard. If the hates not there, it can prosper. I would unabashedly recommend this deck if you have a PTQ in the next two weeks, and you're willing to put in a good 40+ matches testing it out. My losses in a recent PTQ were mainly due to playing on auto-pilot and being rusty (I hadn't played in a constructed event in almost a year… I have 8-month-old twins). The best thing about this deck is that it is still "unknown" and a lot of people won't know how to play against it. That, compounded with the fact that this deck can just steal wins on turn 1 or 2, makes this something to consider in the current PTQ season. I guarantee you will have a blast watching the Hulk get crabs.
