(A quick note on my Worlds report - I seem to have made a pretty stupid error. It wasn't Sam Ward that gave me the Burning Wish deck, it was Nick Wong. I feel pretty bad about this one. I'm horrible with names, but that is absolutely no excuse, and I certainly owe him for this one. I actually made a note to not forget and then turned around and got mixed up again. So in short, I'm very sorry, I swear it won't happen again and if you need anything don't hesitate to message me. I owe you one.)

Psychatog has been around for a long time, and at least until Invasion Block rotates out it seems to be indestructible. Of course, by indestructible I mean in terms of popularity, because at this point the two color version is only winning about half of its matches. The deck has been around for a while, so the foundations of the deck are well known. It's hard to know what needs to be said and what can be assumed, but given this deck's undeniable significance, it's clear that the latest versions of Psychatog warrant serious discussion; I hope I've managed to strike the proper balance.


The Lands

The deck definitely contains one Darkwater Catacombs, four Salt Marsh, four Underground River, nine Islands and a Cephalid Coliseum. That comes to nineteen, so there are either five or six more lands. Four of those lands need to produce black mana. Most players use at least three Swamps to get that black mana. A second Darkwater Catacombs or fourth Swamp usually rounds out those four. Dave Humpherys has been using Sulfur Vent instead of Swamp for a long time, but it never caught on for anyone outside Your Move Games. The remainder of the lands are Islands, one of which is sometimes replaced with the second Cephalid Coliseum.

Looking at the lists, the majority of the two color Psychatog decks at Worlds chose to run twenty-four lands. I had always thought of the deck as running twenty-five lands, and therefore thought of this as cheating on the land. Since the deck is very mana hungry and the mirror is largely about land this seemed like a very bad thing to be doing in a field full of other Psychatog decks. If anything, Cunning Wish should make the deck more mana intensive rather than less, since you need to spend three mana and then cast whatever spell you get with the Wish. It would make sense to cut a land if the metagame had shifted away from Psychatog and therefore let it concentrate less on the mirror matchup, but the opposite was true. Clearly the deck can get away without the twenty-fifth land but I don't see why it would want to.

The question of which lands to play is trickier. Sulfur Vent is a very rogue choice but it definitely has its charms. With the Vent in play you have one more mana available in an emergency. In particular, you can Upheaval a turn early. That's a big advantage. It also allows you to use Cunning Wish a little faster, threatening to get cards like Divert out of the sideboard. It can also defend against similar plays. The question is whether this is worth having a land that comes into play tapped, especially one that doesn't produce blue mana. Counterspell is a very good reason not to play Sulfur Vent on turn one, and if anything sinks the card then that's it. However, the ability of the deck to survive on twenty-four land makes me think that if you run twenty-five then at least one of these lands must be a luxury you can afford, but you may not want to. I'd say more than that is pushing the envelope. In a similar vein, the three color versions play six tapped lands without ill effects that are too serious. Given how often games depend on whether or not a player can Upheaval or do so profitably, I suspect this card may well be worth another look.

Cephalid Coliseum is obviously highly useful later on but painful early. The question is at what point the deck reaches a position where it has enough land to sacrifice one. Since Upheaval is so important to the deck the answer is not for a while. Again, to me it comes down to land count. If you have twenty five lands then you can afford a second Coliseum without much trouble. If you only have twenty four, a second one seems like too much pain, since it both takes longer to have an extra land and is more likely that you'll have to use it for mana a lot. I won at least one game at worlds in the Psychatog mirror purely because my opponent took pain from his Coliseums. Even there, taking pain can be important because it can create Lethal Tog where there was no lethal tog before.

The last option is running a second or even more Darkwater Catacombs instead of Swamps. If you don't plan to sideboard Duress than there is no reason not to do this, but you're sideboarding Duress. It's too good not to use even with sideboard space at an extreme premium, as I will explain later.


The Counters

The four counters that are worth considering for the maindeck are Force Spike, Memory Lapse, Counterspell and Circular Logic. Circular Logic is effectively a hard counter unless Psychatogs start eating up your graveyard. It will also often let you play a Psychatog early and still keep countermagic available. Either creature will make them at least as mana efficient as Counterspell. Memory Lapse and Force Spike are both concerned with speed and mana efficiency. Memory Lapse is an odd card. When you cast it, you're almost always happy because as a result of the exchange you've both gained a land play and you've put a card into your graveyard, which is almost always good for you. In addition, it gives you a great way to survive the second turn or the third turn while you play a Nightscape Familiar.

The card still has a few problems. One of them is that no matter how good it is at performing the job of being a Memory Lapse it isn't that good at being a real counter. The South American mirror matchup strategy illustrated well how valuable keeping a lot of hard counters available can be in the mirror, and that's the place where you're most likely to get involved in counter wars. A second problem is that it can lead to you choking on land since it insures your opponent will draw a spell next turn, although that also means you can sometimes lock up a mana screwed opponent for some time. The other problem with the card is that Merfolk Looter can often make it look positively stupid. Go ahead and Memory Lapse my Arrogant Wurm or Circular Logic. It's all right, I don't mind.

Since those are also the decks' hardest commonly occurring matchups, this is a serious problem. In my mind this keeps it too risky to play four copies. As much as I like the card, it has to compete for space with Circular Logic and even Force Spike, which means you should probably run one to two or perhaps three of them. That question comes down to whether you feel you can afford to not run Force Spike.

Force Spike is a strange spell. There is nothing else that will let you buy time on the first turn against aggressive decks. Even in the mirror the Spike is far from bad, especially now that many players don't use them, and those that do sideboard them out. The card becomes bad when players play around it, and if they're not doing that on purpose then it takes longer to happen. The problem as always is space in a deck with so many cards it has to play twenty-five lands, especially for a card that can contribute to mana flood in the late game. Ideally you definitely want enough Spikes to keep your opponent on his toes, which to me means you probably want two or three. Four is definitely overkill. To go without it, as Romao did, is to gamble that you will not face the green decks where their good draw will kill you without a Spike. Luckily for him, Romao faced nothing but Tog decks. But I predict a lot of very frustrated players who buy his deck and wonder how it's supposed to stop an early rush.

Four Psychatog and four Nightscape Familiar are mandatory. Every now and then someone will try to get away with three Psychatogs, but you can't get away with that. A few French decks at Worlds didn't play Nightscape Familiar but again I dismiss that option offhand. They're too good not to play. The question is whether or not to play a Wonder. There are a small number of players who still play Possessed Aven but given the number of Psychatog decks now playing Flametonge Kavu and Chainer's Edict this no longer seems like a good idea. If there's a ninth creature, it's the one Wonder.

Wonder is somewhat counterintuitive, but I'm convinced you need to find room for one. I was the one on YMG who originally put the Wonder into a Psychatog deck. The main reason I tried it was that there was no other good answer to an opposing Wonder short of using Cunning Wish to go get a Coffin Purge or Cremate. That's mana inefficient and gives up a Wish. It's much better to just discard your own Wonder and block. Once I thought about the idea, I realized that the Wonder opens up a lot of doors for the deck. In many midgame situations, you have lethal tog in play if you want one but will never get through. This happens against other Psychatog decks and in a lot of other places too. They have an army that can't afford to attack into the Psychatog, but you also can't attack into the army. Knowing you have Wonder, you can burn through Deep Analysis and Fact or Fiction to get to lethal damage, discard the Wonder and kill them when they thought they were safe.

The Wonder also lets you cast Upheaval in situations where you couldn't otherwise, especially against aggressive decks. Say you're facing a Red/Green deck and manage to get to eight mana. If you were to Upheaval here, they would cast a Rootwala and Lavamancer on their first turn and the Tog would never get through. Instead, you can attack in the air, then Upheaval and attack in the air again for the kill next turn. The final advantage is just that it's a great card to turn over in a Fact or Fiction, just like Deep Analysis. It may seem odd to cut defense for a Wonder, but it helps the deck a lot.

After creatures and counters comes the card drawing; Fact or Fiction and Deep Analysis. Fact or Fiction is the one spell that is so good it is worth putting one in the sideboard as a Cunning Wish target instead of running all four in the maindeck. While some players initially thought that all four Fact or Fictions belonged in the maindeck, I found that more than half the time when I cast Cunning Wish I went for Fact or Fiction. There just isn't anything else that can replace it. Opportunity is a good target in its own right but there are a lot of situations where you would either have to waste three or four mana and wait a turn to Opportunity or Opportunity isn't castable at all. It's a long way from four mana to six mana. After that it's a long way down to Inspiration. Most of the time, what's the thing you want more of? As you might expect you generally just want more cards. So unless you intend to not use Cunning Wish, the deck will contain three Fact or Fictions main.

Deep Analysis is a more complicated question. It's the next best card drawer after Fact or Fiction and interacts extremely well with Nightscape Familiar. Its biggest advantage is its extreme resistance to counters. To stop a Deep Analysis you have to counter it twice, which is still great card advantage. Normally the only choice an opponent has is to sigh and let you draw your cards. If you don't need the life points then this essentially becomes an uncounterable Opportunity you can cast over two turns. There's only one problem with the card, which is that it is a sorcery. In order to cast it you'll often have to tap out, which lets an opponent cast Fact or Fiction or other Bad Things(tm). Nightscape Familiar can help out a lot here. The key thing to realize however is that tapping out is a lot less dangerous than it looks. Eventually you have to worry about Upheaval, but by that point Deep Analysis will no longer tap you out. The only spell worth worrying about is Fact or Fiction. Even if they have it and cast it, you've essentially broken even. He gets more Psychatog fuel and doesn't pay life, but you get an extra card. If they don't have a Fact or Fiction then this was essentially harmless. Chainer's Edict makes this even more true than it was before, because it both makes the decks more focused on sorceries and makes it easier for either to answer the other's threats, since the only permanents are eight or nine creatures and lands.

Deep Analysis is probably the strongest card in the mirror matchup, although Duress comes close. When you see your opponent has drawn one you just sort of slump down in your chair. If you want to be competitive in the mirror matchup, having access to at least three of them is necessary and the fourth is highly recommended. It is however more important to have access to Duress than the fourth Analysis, because Duress lets you take better advantage of the extra cards after you've drawn them. The deck already has a ton of card drawing. The problem with Deep Analysis is that it is too slow for some other matchups. Ironically it is often still quite good against them, especially when the game turns into a race between your continuously growing Psychatog or Psychatogs together with a march toward Upheaval, against their Merfolk Looters and/or rapidly growing army of large men. Casting that Deep Analysis cancels out a full two turns or so of a Merfolk Looter, and time is on your side. The more both players wait, the closer you are to winning with Upheaval or by using Cunning Wish to get rid of his sources of card advantage. It's a great example of where a dominant deck is so strong that it pays to play your game even when it seems like the last thing you want to do. The strategy is just that good.

Cunning Wish is the next card in the deck and its most recent addition. The deck was already extremely tight and suddenly it needed at least three more slots to fit in Cunning Wish. You would think that if you play Cunning Wish you should play all four. The card is going to eat up half or more of your sideboard, and I want to take maximum advantage of that. More to the point Cunning Wish is a Fact or Fiction, and I'm eager to play more copies of Fact or Fiction. Later in the game you can use Psychatog to recycle used Fact or Fictions and cast them again. I'd definitely put the fourth Wish on the 'wish list' for the deck. If it's not there, that's a sacrifice. But the more I try to get the deck to add up to sixty the more four of these just don't fit.

The last three cards are Upheaval, Chainer's Edict and Repulse. The deck runs two Upheaval. Both are necessary and two is enough. Chainer's Edict is a card choice I used to mock but I have now come to respect it. I used to think that most of the time the creatures you want to kill would just have secret service agents to jump in front of the bullet, but Merfolk Looter turns out to be a lot more vulnerable than I thought it was. In the mirror in particular this card is a lot better than I thought it would be, especially once you have access to Duress. Again, it comes down to the question of how risky it is to tap out - As long as you can be sure they can't Upheaval, there's nothing to stop you from flashing the Edict back when both players have a lot of land in play. This then becomes a Deep Analysis that doesn't leave the deck with nothing but card drawing and actually helps against aggressive decks. It seems like you shouldn't be able to spare seven mana, but it happens. If you can afford to sideboard in Engineered Plague, this card gets a lot better.

Repulse is the classic creature removal card for this deck, but Edict seems like it is now a higher priority. Repulse is very good against a select group of creatures, especially Phantom Centaur and Roar tokens. Roar tokens are great when they're not up against Repulse but horrible when they are. I want enough Repulses to keep opponents honest but given that Chainer's Edict and Cunning Wish can help out I don't want extras I don't need. That means at least the fourth one is not going to make the cut. The other advantage of Repulse is that if an opponent is somehow playing a creatureless deck then it can be used to save a creature. Edict just goes dead, although these days that is much rarer. That's one of the things that makes me finally respect Edict.

That brings us to the sideboard, which is now a part of the deck. In the conclusion to this series, I'll be taking an in-depth look at the best options available given the crucial presence of Cunning Wish, and the matchup strategies this allows.

Three Wishes - Boarding and Matchups

Picking up where we left off, we've come to the sideboard, which is now a part of the deck. There are three things to do with the sideboard. One is to sideboard against other control decks. A second is to sideboard against beatdown decks. The third section is targets for Cunning Wish. Ideally the cards will overlap to an extent, but this is limited because the deck does not want to sideboard out Cunning Wish very often. The three sections have to add up to fifteen cards, so it makes sense to deal with the cards that are not Wish targets first.

Right now, 'another control deck' is just shorthand for another Psychatog deck. There are a small number of Hunting Grounds decks or Trenches decks still hiding out there, but they get hit by most of the same cards so I'm not going to worry about them separately. The deck doesn't have anything particularly bad in these matchups, so the question is how many cards are worth spending slots on to improve the matchup. There are three cards to bring in. The most important is Duress. Resolving Duress almost always takes away the only serious response an opponent might have, and by doing that it lets you tap out. It also gives you vital information, including whether you can win a counter war. Anything less than three of these is unacceptable to me, but the fourth one can be debated because sideboard space is tight.

The second card is additional copies of Deep Analysis, which are also vital but must also fight for space. The third card is potentially Gainsay, but given that it is not that much stronger than the counters already in the deck it is hard to justify spending sideboard slots on it beyond its utility as a target for Cunning Wish. These decks are so tight that it will often end up coming in for Memory Lapse, and that's not very much progress.

What comes out? Force Spike comes out if it was in the maindeck. That's relatively painless. After that everything starts to hurt. I would consider Repulse the next logical target given that the deck already runs Chainer's Edict. On the other hand, Repulse is clearly a net plus later in the game. It can threaten to open up the way for a lethal tog or block an attack by an opponents' lethal tog. It can buy time or cycle to land in the early game. It can even try to counter Chainer's Edict as a cantrip. Still, when compared to the cards being brought in I have no problem cutting it. It doesn't help fight counter wars and can't be reliably cycled in the first few turns.

If you need to take out even more cards then things get much tougher and you need to start looking at cards like Memory Lapse or the fourth Psychatog. Although Mike Pistulnik suggested taking out an Upheaval I cannot agree with that. I think that the threat of Upheaval is vital to keeping opponents honest. If there were three I would sideboard one out due to the length of the games but you need two to insure you'll find one. To summarize, there will be anywhere from three to seven cards you want to bring out, after which gains from sideboarding become marginalized. However, Deep Analysis and Duress are important enough that they're worth it even if you need to take out perfectly good cards to bring them in.


Facing Beatdown
Against Beatdown decks the deck wants to move in the opposite direction. Psychatog and Fact or Fiction together give the deck the long term advantage if an opponent doesn't establish something like Merfolk Looter onto the table permanently, and even then it is still an interesting race. Therefore you can afford to return some of the decks' vast supplies of card advantage. Deep Analysis isn't outright bad but needs to be sacrificed. After that the addition of both Cunning Wish and Chainer's Edict to the deck makes taking cards out next to impossible. All that's left in the deck is the old Psychatog core, Cunning Wish and Chainer's Edict. Since the Edict is quite good here, either Repulse goes (which makes sense in some matchups when they don't have any tokens and you can do better), you don't sideboard further, or Cunning Wish comes out of the deck.

Removing Cunning Wish solves a lot of problems. It lets you sideboard in your Cunning Wish targets, which saves you sideboard space. It certainly trades power for time, which is exactly what you want to do. It creates space with which to sideboard, which is otherwise extremely difficult to do.

The downside is that it means the deck no longer has easy access to its hoser cards. That brings the question of whether that is important. Against a deck like Squirrel Prison some of those cards make the Cunning Wish engine well worth it. Against a deck like Red/Green, Cunning Wish is just an expensive removal spell and can safely be removed. Again, it's going to come down to how many slots are available.

Once those slots are available, what goes in them? I respect three cards here: Ghastly Demise, Slay and Engineered Plague. All are traditional solutions. The Plague plans to combine with Chainer's Edict to take out all the opponents' creatures, while Ghastly Demise and Slay (which are also popular Wish targets, as I'll note below) take out the most problematic ones instead. I've been very impressed with the Plague together with Edict in the red Tog deck, but have never tried it myself in the two color version. It also seems like it would work well with the Wish, because tapping out against a creature deck seems much less dangerous.

Wish Targets
Finally there are the Cunning Wish targets themselves, arranged by the purpose of potential card choices.

Fact or Fiction is by far the most important target. When in doubt, draw some cards. This is the gold standard against which all other targets should be measured. Whatever you got, it could have been a Fact or Fiction. Opportunity is the deluxe version of Fact or Fiction. Later in the game Opportunity is just a better Fact or Fiction, but in most of those games Fact or Fiction is enough to get the job done. I used to think Opportunity was a must have, but I no longer think it's important enough to earn a slot.



Mana Short is second. Mana Short allows you to fight a counter war on his turn. If you win it, you can untap and Upheaval. If he taps out to win the war, you can untap and Upheaval. It's not a card you want to play in the deck, but it's a great card to have available when you need it. Without Mana Short you have to cast Upheaval into a ton of lands without any mana to counter back. The threat of Mana Short is vital to the mirror matchup and makes Upheaval a much better card. The card is even better against rogue control decks like Trenches or Hunting Grounds where you can win any fight you want but have trouble finishing the opponent off.

There obviously has to be some form of creature removal. The most popular choices are Ghastly Demise, Slay and Hibernation in that order. Hibernation was one of the first cards players thought of when they saw Cunning Wish, but in practice I don't consider it worthwhile. Wild Mongrel can hide from it, Basking Rootwala comes back down for free. There just aren't that many true green creatures, and Repulse will probably get the card you're after out of play without costing you a card. Slay and Ghastly Demise will take out the problem permanently. Hibernation's biggest asset is that it deals with Nantuko Blightcutter and Phantom Centaur, but with Chainer's Edict and Repulse in the deck this doesn't seem as vital as it might otherwise. It's a good idea in theory, but I never once got it in playtesting. Instead I went for Slay or Ghastly Demise.

Those two have more to recommend them. Sometimes you simply don't have the mana to go for Slay or the creature in question is not green. In particular, sometimes Merfolk Looter has to die. Slay comes in handy when you're killing a creature like Arrogant Wurm in the first few turns and nets you a card later on in the game when mana is no longer an issue. Do you need both? I went for both on a regular basis and you can always sideboard in one (or both) of them, so it seems worthwhile if nothing else is more important. One final note on Hibernation is that it does deal with Squirrel Nest if you don't include any other answer in your sideboard. Execute is similar to Slay except that there are a lot of green creatures and approximately no white creatures. Killing a Meddling Mage efficiently is a good cause but it will almost never come up. One way to measure the utility of Wish targets (or any potential sideboard card) is to ask how big your sideboard would have to be before this card would start making the cut. For Hibernation I'd put that number around twenty. For Execute I would say about thirty.

For all other permanents, there's Recoil. Even if no one were sure exactly what Recoil was there for, it would be wise to include it anyway. Random enchantment or artifact (or even creature) giving you trouble? Go get Recoil. Opposition and Squirrel Nest are prime reasons to go for Recoil, along with some odd cards like Ensnaring Bridge. Recoil is almost never the best answer, but it's also often a reasonable answer. If you don't play a Recoil, you need to understand that you have no answer to some questions, even if those questions aren't commonly asked. A deck with few slots for Cunning Wish targets will need Recoil; one with more space can better afford to gamble that it has the right tool for each situation. Note that ironically the discard effect is exactly what you don't want given how discard-friendly many opposing decks are, but there's no substitute so it can't be helped. Every now and then you'll see Rushing River and I can see the theoretical argument for it but I've never seen a situation where someone would actually want one instead of Recoil.

While we're on the subject of Opposition and Squirrel Nest, there are some very specialized but very effective answers to both of them, if it's important enough to you. Teferi's Response is by far the best answer to Opposition, but it doesn't do anything else. Having this card in your sideboard takes Opposition from a feared opponent to an extremely two-edged sword. Once they know you have it, opponents need to decide whether to try tapping your lands or just tap creatures. Opposition decks aren't that good precisely because of this and other Wish targets but two somehow made the top eight of Worlds. As a result of this quirk the deck will probably stick around past its expiration date. Even so, Teferi's Response seems too narrow to be worth a sideboard slot.

If you're going after Squirrel Nest, the answer is definitely Aura Graft. Aura Graft takes the Nest and puts it on your side, which makes it almost impossible for an Opposition deck to win. It's amazing how hard it is for them to break through a Nest, especially when they don't have one themselves, and they're unlikely to have a way to deal with it. The Aura Graft also works on a few select creature enchantments, mostly Persuasion and Elephant Guide. It's a great trick, but you can't do it very often.



There's also Psychotic Haze, a card that Patrick Chapin made several jokes about while doing match coverage on Sunday at US Nationals. "Man, Haze would be so amazing here!" (Cue laughter) Haze seems extremely narrow, but it's narrow in a very useful way. Most of the time there's a long game against a deck with Merfolk Looter in it you have a Psychatog, so the Haze will only cost two. It then takes out several of the most annoying creatures out there, primarily Merfolk Looter and Sylvan Safekeeper, but also a bunch of creatures in Red/Green, plus any and all Goblin tokens or other odd sets of creatures. I never went for it during playtesting, but I definitely saw it used profitably while I was in Sydney. Again, it comes down to providing the answers to the type of dedicated attack that can take dedicated control decks out. It's definitely valuable. The real question is whether there are things that are more important.

The next card the deck definitely wants is some kind of counter. Most people choose Gainsay, since most of the time you get a counter the purpose is to fight a counter war. Gainsay is the most efficient card for that. John Larkin used Undermine as his counter (and removed Gainsay for Alter Reality at the last minute for reasons he can't quite explain afterwards) which is something I hadn't considered. It definitely has its charms, particularly with a Wonder in the deck. Sometimes Undermine will be lethal when combined with a possibly flying Psychatog attack. There's also at least one card, Flametonge Kavu, where a removal spell doesn't get the job done. A real counter is necessary, and Gainsay won't work. Ideally you'd have Exclude. I'm actually a little surprised that didn't happen more often. As for Alter Reality, it's a cute idea but definitely not worth the space.

The last important job is taking out a card in the graveyard. The two choices available are Coffin Purge and Cremate. Coffin Purge gets the job done, but Cremate gets you a card. How often is getting a second card out of their graveyard worth a card? About as often as they have exactly two copies of Wonder, Genesis and/or Glory. If you're going for Coffin Purge to take out flashback cards, most of the time it's a waste.

Much better is just getting Fact or Fiction and drawing into answers for that Roar token or their two cards. Them drawing two copies is not that unusual, but an extra card is always welcome. Cremate deals with one card much better than Coffin Purge, and most of the time you want to take out just one. What really swings this decision in favor of Cremate to me is that Cremate can serve as the DC, or Designated Cantrip. Compared to the situations listed above that I considered rare, this one comes up a lot.

There are three basic situations. One is where the deck has one mana free at end of turn and the card you need to find is not a Wish target. Most often that means it is Psychatog or Upheaval. A second related possibility is that you're mana screwed and need to dig, particularly for a fourth land. I see Living Wish decks without a land in their sideboard and I cringe; this is less effective but still a lot better than getting a real spell in such situations. In the extreme case Dave Humpherys actually had Opt in his sideboard, but that takes too much sideboard space for not enough gain. Cremate kills these two birds with one stone (although only Haze will actually kill two Birds). The last situation is something you can laugh at, but it happens more often than you'd think: A Psychatog is half a point short with four mana untapped, so a Wish for Cremate gets the last half point of damage for the kill.

The last two Cunning Wish targets from the top eight decks are Disrupt and Divert. In the exact situation in question, these cards are wonderful, but like all the other odd Wish targets that situation seems rare. The plus side is that these cards can be sideboarded in for game two, but that's also another way of saying they're not all that important. I would consider running one of the two a good idea if the space can be found but both seems like overkill. Before I finish, here are all the other Wish targets played at Worlds: One deck used Circular Logic, which is a tuning card you can also Wish for. Spelljack is cute but far too expensive to happen enough to matter. Plagiarize is another card that looks great when it works, either by stealing a spell or by combining it with Coliseum, but it also almost never happens. Finally, Ed Fear had Confound in his sideboard. Apparently it worked for him but I remain on the side of those who mock it.

Are there any other cards worth considering? Envelop is efficient but doesn't do anything in the current environment. Force Spike can start in the sideboard and then be used as a tuning card. If Keep Watch would draw you enough cards to be good then you were better off getting Psychotic Haze. Mental Note nets you 1.5 damage on a Psychatog, which makes it the best DC for finishing opponents off but that's not enough to justify a sideboard card by itself. Spinal Embrace is just too expensive. Unsummon is a decent idea but there aren't enough creatures that don't die to Ghastly Demise. Afflict will take out a Looter but Psychotic Haze is a better card to have available and there's no room for both. Entomb can tutor for Wonder but most of the time it's better to just Cremate theirs. Tainted Pact is the most consistent way to find a land and a decent way to search for a Psychatog or Upheaval in a pinch, so if there's room for a pure DC then I'd take a look at it. Tombfire is no good because all the decks that use flashback have Wonder as well, and finally there are no rebel decks left for Tsabo's Decree to take out.

If I had to build a two color deck and decided to use Cunning Wish, these would be my choices. It may look like I'm hedging a lot of my bets, and you'd be right. I feel the four Cunning Wish and twenty-five lands would otherwise be necessary, but I'm not prepared to totally sacrifice any other aspect of the deck to do it. I'm not thrilled that I've given up Memory Lapse, but after sideboarding I don't think I'll miss it much and something had to give. I'm also not thrilled about losing Chainer's Edict, which means losing the Engineered Plague plan, but I had to choose between that and Repulse. Whatever you do, the deck is going to be missing something vital.

1 Darkwater Catacombs
2 Cephalid Coliseum
4 Swamp
4 Salt Marsh
4 Underground River
10 Island
4 Counterspell
4 Circular Logic
2 Force Spike
3 Fact or Fiction
3 Deep Analysis
2 Upheaval
3 Cunning Wish
4 Repulse
4 Psychatog
4 Nightscape Familiar
1 Wonder

Sideboard
4 Ghastly Demise
1 Slay
1 Fact or Fiction
1 Mana Short
1 Cremate
1 Recoil
1 Gainsay
1 Psychotic Haze
4 Duress

Now consider the alternative. I never tested after taking the Cunning Wishes out, but remember this deck?

4 Salt Marsh
4 Underground River
11 Island
2 Salt Marsh
1 Cephalid Coliseum
4 Swamp
1 Darkwater Catacombs
4 Counterspell
3 Circular Logic
3 Memory Lapse
3 Force Spike
1 Recoil
4 Repulse
4 Fact or Fiction
3 Probe
4 Psychatog
4 Nightscape Familiar
2 Upheaval

Sideboard
4 Duress
3 Deep Analysis
4 Ghastly Demise
2 Slay
2 Possessed Aven

Yes, that deck - the old Psychatog deck. This is Eric Franz from US Nationals. Everything seems so much easier. It's still probably out of date to try and run Probe or sideboard Possessed Aven because of the way other decks have changed. Chainer's Edict can then be considered, and Wonder should probably find a way in. But no matter how those choices go, after sideboarding I now get everything except Cunning Wish I could ever want against other Psychatog decks. There's fifteen cards to work with and essentially only two modes to end up in. By moving Deep Analysis into the maindeck instead of Probe the deck can satisfy both of those needs completely, perhaps even with room to spare. The flexibility of the Wish is gone, but I don't think I'll miss it all that much. I definitely like games two and three better without the Wish, although game one is probably slightly worse.

Before you rush off to yank out Cunning Wish from the deck, I'll point out that not one person at Worlds built it this way other than a certain group of players that also didn't use Nightscape Familiar. Proceed with extreme caution. This dissatisfaction with Cunning Wish is a lot of what led me to move to a decklist with Burning Wish when I was offered one the night before Worlds. There's a lot to the argument that anyone who doesn't like Cunning Wish shouldn't be playing this deck with or without it - but also keep in mind that in playtesting we referred to playing a Wish as "selling your soul" for multiple good reasons.

Before I finish I'd like to say a few words about Carlos Romao, his decklist, and his mirror matchup strategy. First, congratulations to him on a great tournament and what I'm sure is a well-earned world championship. If you make the top eight of Worlds, you had to work for it. His mirror matchup strategy was to not counter Fact or Fiction (counter it!). It took me a while, but I've come to understand the reasoning behind that. Of course, it's still wrong, but at least it's wrong in a reasonable way. Essentially, he's counting on his opponents to lean too far in the opposite direction and concentrate too much on drawing cards. While they're gaining card advantage Carlos is setting up the game for the win, at which time his opponent will have used up his counters. Against a decklist like Zeigler's this strategy actually makes sense, because Zeigler's deck has very few counters and doesn't sideboard in any more. If as Randy Buehler reported Zeigler kept going to get Deep Analysis with Burning Wish then he may well have just drawn into nothing. I was very careful at Worlds to turn away from going for Deep Analysis once I no longer needed it.

Where this strategy should fail miserably is playing against another deck that is equally filled with good stuff. Suppose both players are using Carlos' exact decklist, which I'm sure will happen in the weeks to come. If you assume the deck sideboarded in four Duress, then look at how many spells are worth fighting over according to this strategy. He fights Upheaval, he obviously must fight Duress and counters, he fights creatures. That's already 25 and three more Fact or Fictions is 28, so a Fact or Fiction will almost always turn over at least two of those cards and more often than not will turn over three, especially if you also count Deep Analysis as something that will draw into a must-counter spell later on. That Fact or Fiction is going to hurt, as will a Deep Analysis. There will be no drawing into land, Fire/Ice and Repulse here. When playing against Diego Ostrovich in the semi-finals, it seems suicidal for them to stick with their strategy, especially since they know the other player understands the matchup and will not throw away the game drawing cards. In short, in special situations you can consider letting a Fact or Fiction resolve that could safely be countered. But let it resolve before the player has enough lands or after sideboarding against another pure control deck? I refuse to accept that this isn't awful.

If Carlos' strategy was incorrect, why did he win so many mirror matches? His deck was very, very good in the mirror. Look at Diego's list for a more balanced version of the same strategy: Diego cut four cards for four Force Spikes. Ignore the Probes in his sideboard, they should be copies of Deep Analysis. Obviously Carlos is at an advantage here. Even Dave Humpherys' listing is at a disadvantage against him after sideboarding because of Duress, and Dave's deck is obviously biased against other Tog decks. All Carlos had to do was nurture that natural advantage, and using both Repulse and Chainer's Edict to keep the opponents' creatures off the table while killing him is one perfectly valid way of doing that. Hats off to him, but don't be misled. Also don't be misled into thinking that this decklist can handle aggression, as I stated earlier. Since I wrote that I have learned that in addition to a lot of matchups against other Tog decks he won a match against the Million Dollar Man, which is a very good matchup for Psychatog and a place where Force Spike is not very good. In an ironic note, this is the one matchup where in the past I had decided this deck had so few threats that the way to win was... to not counter Fact or Fiction.

Go figure.

- Zvi Mowshowitz
zvimowshowitz@yahoo.com