Before I start this week with the deck reviews from San Juan, I’d like to congratulate the winner of this Pro Tour: Paulo Vitor Damo da Rosa. Da Rosa has been very active player in the past few years, making it to the Top 8 of a Pro Tour six times out of the 23 he has played in. That doesn’t even include the multiple finishes in the Top 8 at Worlds Tournaments over the last couple of years. He has worked hard, and his win last weekend was well deserved.

But now, moving onto the formats of last weekend: Block Constructed. Zendikar block was something that no one really knew what to expect going into it. We have gone through the paces as the different sets were released, finding core Zendikar components in Vampires, Lotus Cobra engine decks, and now the birth of Mono Red and UWr Planeswalkers. The problem we found in those decks however, is that each of them have required something from outside of the block. Vampires is nothing without Vampire Nocturnus, Lotus Cobra always liked to play with Knight of the Reliquary, and UWr Planeswalkers obviously needs its Planeswalkers. Only Mono Red really seems to have what it takes to play as a Block deck, and as such it was really the only clearly defined archetype going into this weekend. The lists generally followed the same template, looking something like this:





Pretty much the exact same list as Standard right now, the only thing that is lost is the four Lightning Bolt in the deck, which are replaced by four Zektar Shrine Expedition. The deck is sporting the newly found (and very powerful) Devastating Summons, especially when it is followed up by a kicked Goblin Bushwacker. This deck is solid, aggressive, and can kill you on Turn 3. The only reason I would argue that it’s not completely dominating the format right now, is that Kor Firewalker exists (Alex talked about it in his First Impressions article.)

Another deck that saw some good results this weekend was Mono Green. The decklist was something like this:





This deck is everything a green deck has tried to be and wants to be. Your strategy when playing this deck is: “Play guys, make guys bigger, attack with guys, rinse and repeat.” The deck is centered on making a lot of mana through early guys, and them dropping either a Beastmaster Ascension or Eldrazi Monument and just pummeling your opponent for the finish. While the deck loses to some earlier sweeps (before you get the Monument out), you can board in four Leatherback Baloth that is just so huge that it needs to be dealt with, and it needs to be dealt with now. Dropping him turn two off of an Arbor Elf is going to be a serious problem for decks like Mono Red, because Baloth is just way too big of a creature to deal with.

While both of those decks seem pretty solid and defined, there are many other archetypes that people seem to have trouble setting down. An example of one those is the UGr control deck that seems to be shifting. Here are two different lists that saw some good results:









As you can see from the lists, these are two decks that seem to have the same general ideas, but are going about them completely differently. The first one uses the same Beastmaster Ascension kill as Mono Green, but is going about it using Eldrazi Spawn instead. It seems to be playing almost like a midrange deck, countering only key spells their opponents are playing with Unified Will, while just stocking up on cards and creatures until they are ready to finish. The second deck, on the other hand, plays into almost a Mana Ramp strategy. Using Oracle of Mul Daya and Explore to drop a bunch of lands quickly, and then Avenger of Zendikar and a big Comet Storm to finish their opponent off.

So that’s it for this week. As I said before, the format is wide open, and if you are interested in checking out more decks from the Pro Tour, check out the page on the Wizards site that can be found here!

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Stop by the forums and let us know what you think is the best direction to take Block Constructed in Zendikar! Later this week I will be back with a first look at some of the first peeks at M11! Until then!

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