Shuffleupagus is my favorite deck. I saw MaGo's preview for Psychogenic Probe back in the fall of 2003, and immediately went about trying to build a deck that would kill people via probe damage.
I took a UBR to a standard PTQ (Mirrodin-Kamigawa time) after a lot of work, hoping I would do well. I felt especially good against Tooth and Nail, due to my Cranial Extractions and Bribery. I faced Tooth in my first match, but stalled out after extracting the Tooth and Nails. I remember getting beaten up by a hard-cast Solarion. Ugh. I had a bunch of fun in the lower brackets from there on out, but I couldn't keep up with the middling aggro creature decks to get back into a good position. I did have some exciting moments. Since I was often going through my opponents' decks, I did well with Mindblaze. One time, I had it on the stack, certain death for my opponent. They responded with Twincast, but whiffed on the guess. Whew!
Mirrodin cycled out of standard, then later out of Extended. Thankfully, Modern arrived, happily going all the way back to Mirrodin. Psychogenic Probe is relevant again! And just barely. There are so many good colors to use the probe with in Modern, but I decided to go with UB. Here's the decklist:
Main deck:
4 Psychogenic Probe (obviously)
4 Cosi's Trickster (yes!)
0 Psychic Surgery (Why does this have to cost 1U instead of just U? Booo.)
4 Lantern of Insight
4 Serum Visions
4 Gitaxian Probe
3 Bribery
4 Remand
4 Bitter Ordeal
4 Cranial Extraction (I probably even know what's in your hand...)
4 Ghost Quarter (Combos really nicely with Bitter Ordeal)
4 Watery Grave
3 Swamp
14 Island
Sideboard:
4 Surgical Extraction
3 Blessed Reincarnation
3 Mimeofacture
1 Bribery
1 Counterbore
1 Acquire
2 Thada Adel
(I probably need some Learn from the Past in here...)
Modern is tomorrow! We'll see how the new Shuffleupagus does! I'm expecting there to be lots of Tron, so maybe I can Bribery up an Emrakul.
Update - results:
ReplyDeleteI went 1-3, unimpressive, but it was loads of fun. I lost 2-1 against RW burn run by Jay, the store owner. I barely won game 1 (won at 1 life) but I also nearly won game 3 (he was at 2). This was the best match; we drew a huge crowd and the gameplay was very tight! :-D
In round 2, I beat someone who was at his first tournament, running slivers. I think he wound up learning a bunch, and I only won 2-1.
In round 3, I lost 0-2 to Cody's splinter twin deck. I realized here that I really needed dimir signets to get off a turn 3 Cranial Extraction to get ahead of the 4-drop splinter twin.
In round 4, I lost 0-2 to James' Amulet of Vigor. I did have some fun in this one. In game two, I had two of his Briberied Primeval Titans and he had one of his own and a Dragonlord Dromoka. I cast my third Bribery; and he responded with Summoner's Pact. He got his other Titan, the last creature in his deck. My Bribery whiffed, and those two were enough to take me out.
A fun night for sure! I'm already thinking about the next version of Shuffleupagus!