SOI Weenies

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Happy Monday MTG peeps,

We took along a Boros Allies equipment build for Friday Night Magic at our local gaming store, OMG! Games for Friday Night Magic and although the decklist was almost matching that of the W/R Weapons Trainer list by Daniel Riley who took 3rd Place at the StarCity Games Invitational Qualifier in Wilbraham the previous weekend, it just did not perform well against the local metagame.  To this end, we are eager to attempt to play something near and dear to our heart - the new post-Shadows Over Innistrad white weenies which is rather popular right now with Magic: the Gathering players.

If you have been reading MTG Realm for any lenght of time, then you will likely know that Craig Wescoe is our MTG Spirit Animal.  Craig has a wonderful article over at TCG Player titled 'How to Defeat the Humans' and we think it is worth a read to anyone wanting to take a humans decklist out to play or want to build against just such a list.

It may not have come as a surprise to some that this list was as popular as it was during the first large tournament after the official release of Shadows Over Innistrad at SCG Open in Baltimore.  It certainly was a surprise to us however just how much this archetype pushed into day two of the event capturing half of the Top 8 spots.

Wizards of the Coast was very smart in their planning to avoid having Hardened Scales (or functionally similar card) in the same standard constructed format as Thalia's Lieutenant - that may have broken the format, especially with a cheap bounce effect like Essence Flux to put the +1/+1 counter party over the top.  With choices of Knight of the White Orchid, Hanweir Militia Captain and Always Watching the list practically build itself.  Declaration in Stone is pretty sweet spot removal in white and even inclusions such as Bygone Bishop can be worked in to create clue tokens to feed into Angelic Purge to exile artifacts, creatures, or enchantments.

The core list is modified to include blue to be able to take advantage of the powerhouse that is Reflector Mage and the great utility offered by Ojutai's Command.  We dread the oncoming hate for the popular deck and suspect the mono-white crowd to begin adaptation towards the U/W Humans list and start packing a full bookset of Negate.  As Craig had indicated, one should expect more conditional board wipes like Languish to show up in non-human lists.  This may go tit-for-tat with human players now packing blinks like Eerie Interlude to sidestep wipes until such a time as the original mono-white or white-blue human list has lost its oritinal virility.  Anywhoos, we will want to grab this list by the horns and see where and how long this ride will take us.


Happy Brewing!
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