"I won FNM last week with my R/G land destruction deck," said Jacob Hornbender, riffling his Lay Wastes proudly. "Me and my friend Jamie have been testing it, and it has a pretty damn good record against the field: It has an 18-5 win versus Tog, an amazing 27-6 record versus U/G Madness, and it goes about 50/50 with Slide. The only really bad match-up is against Charlie Schttormann's merfolk deck - that's, like, the deck to beat around here - but I have Seedtimes in the board for that."

Jacob's match wins have been painstakingly documented; his eighteen wins have come against Psychatog builds that use both self-targeting Traumatizes and Read the Runes, and his amazing run of U/G Madness wins comes from madness decks that utilize the amazing power of Obsessive Search to its fullest.

It's springtime, and the scrubs can feel happy.

"It's kind of a healing time, really," said Jeff Donais, commenting on the irregular scheduling. "All year long, the scrubs make these crappy decks, but the pros break the format within weeks and smash everything. But every spring, we give them a brief respite; the pros are off testing for Venice, and anyone who really wants to qualify is working on their Limited game.

"That leaves Regionals," he said, "But that's six weeks away, and all the wannabes are gonna barney up to the pros and try to leech their decks dry anyway. So who does that leave?"

"Decimate!" says Jacob, holding up the card. "That's the tech. I mean, it destroys both Daru Encampment and Coat of Arms and Mobilization, all at once. That way, I don't have to devote slots to expensive jank like Burning Wish."

The four-mana casting cost is the beginning of the curve of Jacob's deck, but he poo-poohs such theories as "Mana curve" and "Efficiency."

"You see, the pros don't really know it all," he says, leaning back into his chair with a contented sigh, neatly forgetting that nobody's used a deck even remotely resembling anything a pro developed in the past month. "They think it's all about speed, speed, speed. But slow and steady? That's what wins the race."

Jacob's team, Team Merchants of Death, has joined forces with Team Counterstrike, another local group, in order to pool their play-testing data. So far, their gauntlet consists of a revamped U/W Mobilization, an Alarmist/Dermoplasm deck, Jacob's land destruction deck, and a host of "hand-tooled" net decks that have been gutted by changes that would make Kai Budde weep. The best results have all been from the U/W Mobilization deck, mainly because it contains three counterspells and two Spelljacks.

"Via this clever plan," Jeff Donais continued, pointing at a big chart that had the word "LOSER" on it, "We've neatly drained the Friday Night Magic tournaments of anyone who has a shred of talent, leaving the pathetic wrecks of humanity to win with their Sliver theme decks and Artificial Evolution-based combos. These wins give them hope; a scrub can cling to that one win in a fourteen-man tournament like they'd just climbed Mount Everest with a pair of broken legs. And he will, he will."

Signs of the scrubs' resurgence are everywhere:

• The pros remain in an awkward silence, terrified to say anything relevant about Standard for fears that revealing any new Type 2 decks will inadvertently leak their hard-earned Onslaught Block tech;


• Scrubs feel confident enough in their results to write riotously-misleading articles, from decks that kill themselves before turn 5 to cocky articles on terrible cards to decks that dispense with mentioning match-ups at all.


• Horrible decks are winning tournaments at Friday Night Magics across the country.


• Apparently unaware that they're not even fucking qualified, total idiots are writing Onslaught Block articles, oblivious to the fact that only 300 people or so are going to play in this tournament, and the people who win are not going to get their tech from some ninny writing on the internet.

"Hey," said Donais, shrugging. "This whole 'talent' thing really gets in the way of a mass audience, so every once in awhile we have to sort of revamp things for the scrub so that they can win something. Not that, hint hint, Visara the Dreadful was made for that in Onslaught Sealed deck or anything."

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"I won FNM last week with my R/G land destruction deck," said Jacob Hornbender, riffling his Lay Wastes proudly. "Me and my friend Jamie have been testing it, and it has a pretty damn good record against the field: It has an 18-5 win versus Tog, an amazing 27-6 record versus U/G Madness, and it goes about 50/50 with Slide. The only really bad match-up is against Charlie Schttormann's merfolk deck - that's, like, the deck to beat around here - but I have Seedtimes in the board for that."

Jacob's match wins have been painstakingly documented; his eighteen wins have come against Psychatog builds that use both self-targeting Traumatizes and Read the Runes, and his amazing run of U/G Madness wins comes from madness decks that utilize the amazing power of Obsessive Search to its fullest.

It's springtime, and the scrubs can feel happy.

"It's kind of a healing time, really," said Jeff Donais, commenting on the irregular scheduling. "All year long, the scrubs make these crappy decks, but the pros break the format within weeks and smash everything. But every spring, we give them a brief respite; the pros are off testing for Venice, and anyone who really wants to qualify is working on their Limited game.

"That leaves Regionals," he said, "But that's six weeks away, and all the wannabes are gonna barney up to the pros and try to leech their decks dry anyway. So who does that leave?"

"Decimate!" says Jacob, holding up the card. "That's the tech. I mean, it destroys both Daru Encampment and Coat of Arms and Mobilization, all at once. That way, I don't have to devote slots to expensive jank like Burning Wish."

The four-mana casting cost is the beginning of the curve of Jacob's deck, but he poo-poohs such theories as "Mana curve" and "Efficiency."

"You see, the pros don't really know it all," he says, leaning back into his chair with a contented sigh, neatly forgetting that nobody's used a deck even remotely resembling anything a pro developed in the past month. "They think it's all about speed, speed, speed. But slow and steady? That's what wins the race."

Jacob's team, Team Merchants of Death, has joined forces with Team Counterstrike, another local group, in order to pool their play-testing data. So far, their gauntlet consists of a revamped U/W Mobilization, an Alarmist/Dermoplasm deck, Jacob's land destruction deck, and a host of "hand-tooled" net decks that have been gutted by changes that would make Kai Budde weep. The best results have all been from the U/W Mobilization deck, mainly because it contains three counterspells and two Spelljacks.

"Via this clever plan," Jeff Donais continued, pointing at a big chart that had the word "LOSER" on it, "We've neatly drained the Friday Night Magic tournaments of anyone who has a shred of talent, leaving the pathetic wrecks of humanity to win with their Sliver theme decks and Artificial Evolution-based combos. These wins give them hope; a scrub can cling to that one win in a fourteen-man tournament like they'd just climbed Mount Everest with a pair of broken legs. And he will, he will."

Signs of the scrubs' resurgence are everywhere:

• The pros remain in an awkward silence, terrified to say anything relevant about Standard for fears that revealing any new Type 2 decks will inadvertently leak their hard-earned Onslaught Block tech;


• Scrubs feel confident enough in their results to write riotously-misleading articles, from decks that kill themselves before turn 5 to cocky articles on terrible cards to decks that dispense with mentioning match-ups at all.


• Horrible decks are winning tournaments at Friday Night Magics across the country.


• Apparently unaware that they're not even fucking qualified, total idiots are writing Onslaught Block articles, oblivious to the fact that only 300 people or so are going to play in this tournament, and the people who win are not going to get their tech from some ninny writing on the internet.

"Hey," said Donais, shrugging. "This whole 'talent' thing really gets in the way of a mass audience, so every once in awhile we have to sort of revamp things for the scrub so that they can win something. Not that, hint hint, Visara the Dreadful was made for that in Onslaught Sealed deck or anything."

Discuss this article in the Magic: the Gathering Forums!