Happy New Year all!

Hope you didn't get too blasted that you forgot that the Extended PTQ season is upon us. Ah yes, Extended season, the glorious three months of the year where we dust off our Tarmogoyfs and Ravnica dual lands in the name of a free plane ticket (baggage fees sold separately). I am one of many players who has a love-hate relationship with this wonderful time of year. We love the huge cardpool and the wide range of decks, combos, and creativity the format gives us, but we hate the mass quantities of money cards that restrict us in our feasible options. Do I have to fork over $200+ for a set of Baneslayer Angels or Tarmogoyfs? Do I have to play a dozen fetchlands or Ravnica duals? Do I have to resort to playing a strictly inferior deck because I have to pay off my student loans?

The answer to all of these questions, thankfully, is no. Baneslayers, Goyfs, fetches, and duals are expensive not because they guarantee you the blue envelope, but because they are quality cards with reach in multiple formats and archetypes. Your success does not depend on the extent of your bank account, but rather your play skill and ability to find a deck that can trump the players who think it's all about the Benjamins.

Knowing that I don't have all the money in the world to work with (Thanks, horrible job market!), I set off to find a deck that could play with the big boys but wouldn't break the bank. I perused the decklists from Pro Tour-Austin and Worlds for the glass slipper and rediscovered Ivan Lopez Garcia's Tooth and Nail list from Austin. I retooled the sideboard and came up with this for my first batch of testing.

In goldfishing, the deck could churn out a turn five Iona + Painter's Servant with great regularity. But when it came time to play against humans, as I tested against every deck imaginable from All In Red to Zoo, I found that while the deck is a blast to play, it lacks five crucial things that would otherwise make it viable.

Speed

This deck does not race at all. A turn five win seems impressive until you look at all the other decks that can lock it down turn turn five or earlier:

• All In Red – A turn one Deus or Demigod does not bode well for a deck that wins with a nine-mana sorcery. God forbid they bring Blood Moon into the picture as well.
• Zoo – Domain, Naya, or Rubin? Pick your poison. It's still not going to end well for you with that onslaught of creatures and burn spells, or in the case of Rubin Zoo, Baneslayer Angels.
• Burn – The following is a list of cards that do not hurt you in any way, shape, or form in Burn decks: Mountain. Yeah, you heard me. Just the basic land. Everything else either hits you directly or facilitates something even more painful.
• Scapeshift – The win may come turn five on average, just like Tooth, but Scapeshift has a good amount of control to back it up.
• Dark Depths – Turn two 20/20? Kitchen Finks is not going to be much help.
• Dredge – I really underestimated the speed of this deck. Turn 3 swing with a bunch of 3/3 hasty guys? Yeah... can't deal with that.

Card Draw

Harmonize? That's it? Sure, you can thin the deck with Sakura-Tribe Elder and Sylvan Scrying, but that doesn't do nearly enough. You'll see over the course of the game at most fifteen or so cards, and you need to ensure that one of them is Tooth and Nail.

Protection

Thoughtseize Tooth, Iona, or Painter's Servant; Meddling Mage naming Tooth and Nail; Venser your Tooth and Nail cast with Boseiju mana; Mistbind Clique you on the upkeep you were supposed to go off; Ghost Quarter your Boseiju... yawn. As Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes fame would say, you can present the control deck the material but you can't make it care.

Resiliency

Sorry, but you're going to have to wait until game 2 for that Krosan Grip with that Blood Moon that just shut off your tron. Sorry, but you're going to have to wait until game 2 for that Relic of Progenitus to deal with that Thopter Foundry-Sword of the Meek combo that put the game out of reach. Sorry, but... I think you get the picture.

Removal

Oblivion Stone seems like a good fix-all to your creature, Blood Moon, and Thopter Foundry issues, until you realize you need eight mana to pop it right away. You could play it one turn and pop it the next, but that gives just the window they need to Pithing Needle it or otherwise make it irrelevant.

I talked with some friends about how I could overcome these issues. The most common suggestions were to splash white for Day of Judgment/Wrath of God and Path to Exile, or blue for Peer Through Depths, Condescend, Remand and the like. And while those could work in theory, the blue version dies more quickly, and the white version slows down your Tooth even more. Another workaround was to cut every creature except for the ones that Tooth and Nail was to fetch, but that rendered the deck even more vulnerable to aggro.

Instead of trying to force anything more into something that clearly wasn't working, I hung up the Tooth and Nail hat and decided to look for a deck that had everything Tooth didn't. Something that was a blast to play. Something that people may be expecting or not expecting. All these signs pointed me to...

Scapeshift

More on that next week.

Until next time, look before you leap.

-Sam