Going Rogue part 2 - a little help with deckbuilding from worlds

By Jim Marlow (and Ben Heath)

Hey everyone,

So my last article has hopefully thrown down a gauntlet to you maelstrom pulse whores, and/or bloodbraid lovers, to learn that you can actually gain an advantage over your opponant by having a weaker deck....

I heard from this weeks fnm that a player went 0-3 with jund, although someone else went 4-0.
Heathy ninja edit: The winning deck at worlds was jund hate, such is the dominance of jund in the field at the moment. Jund was also used a lot in the PTQs, seen as a solid deck. Interestingly only 1 Jund deck made the PTQ top 8.

So clearly jund is a swingy deck, with both good and bad performances possible. However, despite over 35% (i think) of the worlds fields playing jund, and a good few of them up at the higher tables, there were some really awesome and clearly powerful rogue decks that managed to equal the results posted by broodmate and co.

Here is a look at some of the crazy decks that went 5-1 or better during the standard portion of worlds.

Petr Brodzek
Main Deck 60 cards

4 Arid Mesa
7 Mountain
4 Naya Panorama
1 Plains
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Terramorphic Expanse

4 Goblin Guide
4 Hell's Thunder
4 Hellspark Elemental
4 Plated Geopede

4 Ajani Vengeant
4 Burst Lightning
4 Earthquake
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Zektar Shrine Expedition

Sideboard
2 Chandra Ablaze
4 Goblin Ruinblaster
4 Path to Exile
3 Quenchable Fire
2 Volcanic Fallout

Im surely not the only one to read this decklist and wonder how this guys standard deck got mixed in with his draft deck . Panorama's in standard: BONKERS!
Ninja edit 2: 1 is ok, it's decent manafixing, and can be seen as another fetch land, albeit a very bad one. Since he already has 8 fetches, I'm not entirely sure he needs any more.

This deck is clearly full of unusual choices, but results speak for themselves, and in a format full of aggro decks, this attempts to outrace them all. Ruinblaster is fast becoming my favourite card in standard....but what the hell does quenchable fire do?


Benjamin Rozmon
2009 World Championships,

Main Deck
4 Arid Mesa
4 Glacial Fortress
4 Island
2 Mountain
4 Plains
4 Scalding Tarn
4 Sejiri Refuge

2 Sphinx of Jwar Isle
3 Wall of Denial

3 Ajani Vengeant
2 Day of Judgment
3 Double Negative
3 Earthquake
4 Flashfreeze
3 Jace Beleren
4 Lightning Bolt
2 Mind Spring
3 Oblivion Ring
2 Path to Exile

sideboard
1 Ajani Vengeant
4 Baneslayer Angel
1 Day of Judgment
3 Essence Scatter
2 Felidar Sovereign
4 Spreading Seas

It seems like loads of pro's tried and failed to brew the succesful control deck that blue mages were hoping for (myself included). Again this deck is not the control deck i expected to emerge as the strongest, sans baneslayer and with maindeck double negative and earthquake. Spreading seas in the board is more proof that mana denial seems to be the strategy of choice against the b/r/g menace (doesn't quite have the same ring to it)

Yet another ninja edit:
Blue mages were left bitterly disappointed after blue failed to make a name for itself at worlds. From what I saw it looks as though control players need to pick a shard. Go bant for spreading seas deck or grixis for crul pyromancer combo. Don't go esper, it's simply too weak at the moment.

Conley Woods
2009 World Championships,
Main Deck

4 Forest
1 Misty Rainforest
4 Mountain
4 Savage Lands
3 Scalding Tarn
3 Swamp
4 Verdant Catacombs

4 Acidic Slime
4 Goblin Ruinblaster
4 Lotus Cobra
4 Mold Shambler
2 Ob Nixilis, the Fallen
4 Rampaging Baloths

4 Harrow
4 Khalni Heart Expedition
3 Terminate
4 Violent Ultimatum

sideboard
3 Caldera Hellion
4 Cruel Ultimatum
2 Island
4 Jund Charm
1 Swamp
1 Terminate

This deck was always going to get talked about. This deck is absolute insanity, and i think probably the only bit of fun in a completely boring and uninteractive format. If im going to be uninteractive i want to be casting violent ultimatum turn 3, not aimlessly flipping the top cards of my deck over in search for a blightning like an ape!


I hope these three decks have whet your appetites for the standard constructed event in Leeds next week, and hopfully some decks like these and/or some of your own designs show up to cause havoc among the format. I know that some people enjoy playing well tuned decks, that will always do well and are the best....but i hope there's still some people that would prefer to have a massive laugh doing crazy things with their own brews. If the satisfaction of playing your own deck, or something you've tweaked yourself isn't enough, then surely beating all the netdeckers with khalni heart expedition or zektar shrine expedition is.

I look forward to seeing everyone's monstrosities next wednesday (or tuesday?), hopefully i wont create a monster by writing this because i will stil metagame against jund....and probably face 15 spreading seas decks or something.

Final ninja edit:
It would be okay if all the jund decks had something different about them, like the last deck. But they don't. No, one of Siege -Gangs, Master of Wild Hunts and other stupid creatures doesn't count. I will be posting a deck that, although didn't go 5-1 or better, I whole-heartedly believe to be the best control deck there is at the moment. For those of you who are interested, yes I did play jund in Rome. I'm now sick to the back teeth of seeing jund decks, so I'm glad I got that out the way now! But looking back, I would have played this decklist, all to be revealed!


See you all next week,

Jim .....and Ben.


As always, feel free to comment on the article below. If you would like to contribute to the blog via and article, pictures, or absolutely anything, please contact me at ss07jm@leeds.ac.uk