Extending my confusion...

I sometimes have problems with linear time.  The seemingly natural process of one moment following another is occasionally an abstract concept for me and gets me very confused.  This blog is not really helping that too much.  It has a very logical progression in the fact that I blog each week about the deck that I will be playing next week.  However, I don’t actually write these blogs in that order so this blog is actually written after next weeks as I wrote that last week.  You can see how I get confused.  To add to this as I was growing up my Granddad had a number of daft sayings, his favourite being;

“Next Tuesday being Ash Wednesday, we are going to hold an open air meeting in the church to decide what colour too whitewash the walls…”

This series of conflicting statements is enough to get even the most sharp witted of us into a succession of frowns and raised eyebrows.  This is where I found myself when approaching this blog and discussing the deck I intend to play in extended at FNM Relax on 10th August 2012.  To add to my confusion I had intended to play extended Merfolk originally but will not have all of the cards I need by then so had to come up with a different extended deck.  This then takes me back to next week’s blog when I will be using the Krenko starter deck but not in a way that would immediately come to mind.

I like the idea of playing theme/tribal decks at FNM Relax – it seems a fun place to do that.  Don’t get me wrong tribal can be very effective, I hear the Zombie/Vampire combination has been a top tier deck since Dark Ascension, I may even have played a bit of Zombies myself.  On that topic I believe a very well done goes out to all of our guys that did so well at the PTQ this past weekend with Fabian Quinn making top 4 and Mike Readhead making the final with B/R Zombies.  Congratulations to Levi Mochan for winning (Levi is good friends with Mike Boon by the way) and good luck on the pro-tour.  Deck lists for the top 8 can be found here.  

Anyway back to the future and next weeks deck!  So with Merfolk not being a possibility I thought it would be a good idea to go the complete opposite and go Goblins! 

Goblins had it’s potential in standard last year with a number of great goblins in Zendikar and Scars blocks.  Extended gives you all of these and more, so here is the deck list:

10 Mountains

4 Copperline Gorge

4 Arid Mesa

3 Teetering Peaks

21 Land

4 Goblin Guide

4 Goblin Bushwhacker

4 Goblin Chieftain

2 Warren Instigators

2 Krenko, Mob Boss

3 Signal Pests

2 Goblin Wardriver

2 Siege Gang Commander

2 Hero of Oxid Ridge

25 Creatures

4 Lightning Bolts

2 Krenko’s Command

2 Brimstone Volley

3 Faithless Looting

3 Shrine of Burning Rage

14 Spells

Sideboard

4 Cavern of Souls

1 Shrine of Burning Rage

2 Incinerate

4 Ancient Grudge

2 Naturalise

2 Bonfire of the Damned

This deck is pretty self explanatory – it makes lots of goblins, gives them buffs and charges into the red zone to reduce the opponents life total to zero as quickly as possible.  Lots of cheap red spells mean that the shrines power up quickly and become a finisher very quickly.

Before I go just a note that this weekend is games day at Patriot Sheffield with both standard/draft formats.  All participants get a Mwonvuli Beast Tracker promo and the top 8 get a full alternate art foil Magmaquake.  First place will receive a Nicol Bolas play mat which has “Games Day Champion” on it along with the Nicol Bolas artwork as seen on the new Deck Builders Toolkit.

Look forward to seeing you for Legacy this Friday, see you there…