[Format] Peasant Magic

[Ephraim]

Deck Construction Rules
Decks must contain at least 60 cards.
Decks may not contain more than 5 uncommon cards.
Decks may not contain any rare cards.
Decks may not contain more than 4 copies of any card, except for basic lands.
When determining a card's rarity, if the card has appeard in multiple sets, count the most common rarity designation.

The following cards are banned:
Ali From Cairo
Bazaar of Baghdad
Berserk
Candelabra of Tawnos
Diamond Valley
Juzam Djinn
Library of Alexandria
Mana Drain
Mishra’s Workshop

The following common cards count as uncommon cards:
Strip Mine

In tournaments that allow a sideboard, the number of uncommon cards in both the main deck and the sideboard may not exceed 5.

*** *** ***

Gods of War
Creatures (23)
4 Frontline Strategist
2 Soul Warden
4 Crowssbow Infantry
4 Aven Farseer
4 Goblin Legionnaire
1 Devout Witness
4 Wingbeat Warrior

Spells (15)
4 Lightning Bolt
4 Smite
3 Swords to Plowshare (uncommon)
4 Raise the Alarm

Artifacts (2)
2 Isochron Scepter (uncommon)

Land (20)
13 Plains
7 Mountain

Sideboard (incomplete)
4 Red Elemental Blast
2 Circle of Protection: Red

*** *** ***

This deck establishes control of the board by dictating the rules of engagement. All of its spells (particularly coupled with Isochron Scepter) and almost all of its creatures may be used to play combat tricks.

Frontline Strategist: With 21 of the deck's 23 creatures being Soldiers, and more being generated with 4x Raise the Alarm, any deck not packing Soldiers of its own is going to suffer severe losses, when they were expecting trades.

Wingbeat Warrior: First Strike cannot be rated high enough in swinging combat in the deck's favour. Once again, causing would-be trades to leave my creatures alive is hell on an opponent's ability to wage war.

Aven Farseer: With 8 morphing creatures in the deck (and they almost never get played any other way), these can get very large. Large fliers are hard to come by in the common and uncommon levels, so even as 3/3's, they're dangerous.

Crossbow Infantry: Especially when a face-down creature threatens the possibility of first strike, Crossbow Infantry allows 2/2's (which this deck has in abundance) to push through, even against 2/3's and 3/3's.

Soul Warden: With a lot of cheap creatures, plus Raise the Alarm (and the possibility of Raise the Alarm on Isochron Scepter), Soul Warden can give this deck a ridiculous life advantage. Life Gain may not typically be a good strategy, but the investment is small (the only other one-drop creature is Frontline Strategist, and that almost always gets played as a face-down creature) and the payback can provide the game with many extra turns in which to bring about a victory.

Lightning Bolt: This is almost a no-brainer in a red Peasant Magic deck. Cheap removal, efficient damage, and a spell that can be imprinted on Isochron Scepter make this a must-have.

Smite: This is the only card I'm questioning the 4-of status, at the moment. It is the deck's absolute saviour against other aggressive decks, but is almost a dead draw against control and combo.

Swords to Plowshares: About the same effectiveness as Lightning Bolt. It trades damage for creature-removal utility, but it's proven itself to be a worth inclusion.

Raise the Alarm: It's already a soldier deck. It already has Isochron Scepter. There's simply no reason not to include this card.

Red Elemental Blast: Last years Gencon winner was a mono-blue deck with a Brain Freeze Kill. REB can only take out one copy of Brain Freeze at a time, but if the pile of Brain Freezes is only barely enough to deck me, taking out 1 or 2 copies could provide me with enough turns to finish the blue deck off.

Circle of Protection: Red: Burn is easy to do in Peasant Magic.  Having protection against it will prevent losses to random fast red decks.

*** *** ***

Right now, I'm toying with some ideas. One, I would like to add Guided Strike to the main deck. Blue has a lot of card drawing at the common level. Red and White, less so. Putting a Guided Strike on an Isochron Scepter isn't great, but it's better than a bare one card per turn, plus +1/+0 and first strike are hardly bad.

I am also considering using Gilded Light instead of Red Elemental Blast in the sideboard. Gilded Light protects me even better from Brain Freeze and also against burn. Unfortunately, it's uncommon, and would require me not to run Swords to Plowshares. This doesn't seem like a great idea, but if combo or control are more common in the meta than aggro, it might be worthwhile. If that's the case, it could also take the maindeck slots currently devoted to StP.

[rvs]

Doesn't Red LD 0wn this format?

[Jacob Orlove]

Doesn't Red LD 0wn this format?

Not when a significant number of people will play elf decks.

[RoadTrippin]

I posted a high tide deck off the top of my head a few months ago that seemed pretty silly in this format (with 4 frantic search and all). I think I'll go look for it...

[Dj Nohayritmo]

Could it be possible to make a half-decent Psychatog Based deck?

I think that it has some potential due to the fact that both Frantic Search and Windfall are unrestricted.. and fling is common right?

FlingAtog:

4 Frantic Search
4 Careful Study
4 Sleight of Hand
2 Windfall

3 Whispersilk Cloak
3 Psychatog
2 Fling
4 Terror
4 Dark Banishing
4 Crippling Fatigue
4 Diabolic Edict

4 Sulfur Vent
7 Swamps
10 Islands


The idea of the deck is to drop 20 cards in the graveyard, clear the path with a lot of creature removal, attack with the psychatog and then fling it to make a full 20 in one attack (I did put any counterspells because this format is too fast, and because it is creature based I use a lot of creature removal)

[CmdrSam]

I played a 40 or so person tournament in this format and came in 2nd, with a deck that was almost unfair.

4 High Tide
4 Cloud of Faeries
4 Snap
4 Frantic Search
4 Opt
4 Impulse
4 Brainstorm
4 Merchant Scroll
4 Prosperity (uncommon)
1 Brain Freeze (uncommon)

and maybe a Feldon's Cane, and some islands.

The only guy who could beat me was playing BG with heavy, heavy discard and a bunch of Blastoderms and so forth. I took one of the three games, but fizzled going off in the third, having to go off earlier than I would have liked due to his pressure.

Basically, a lot of the people I played against were byes. Someone would put down a plains and I would mentally apologize to them.

--Sam L-L

[Manpriest]

Re: the first deck listed on this thread.

StP was common in ice age, so you just free'd up 3 uc slots.

[Ephraim]

Not so, Manpriest. According to cardkingdom.com and Magic Workstation, Swords to Plowshares has never been released, except as an uncommon.

Also, an amendment to my deck list, above. 1 or 2 Feldon's Cane in the sideboard should provide protection from that nasty Brain Freeze deck.

[CmdrSam]

Also, an amendment to my deck list, above. 1 or 2 Feldon's Cane in the sideboard should provide protection from that nasty Brain Freeze deck.

It's a good start, but they can (and will) play multiple Feldon's Canes and simply kill you with several large Prosperities.

I actually played one match where I won the first game and sided out my Feldon's Cane. My opponent played first turn Feldon's Cane, and after some thought I ended up comboing out and Prosperitying for 60 for the draw. I sided back in the Cane and won the third game...

The REBs will go a lot further, in my opinion. I might even side 6 or 7 if you're expecting to see a whole lot of people with Tide (the other 2-3 are Pyroblast, naturally).
 
--Sam L-L

[Ephraim]

I'll have both REB's and Feldon's Cane in the sideboard. REB protects me from Prosperity while Feldon's Cane protects me from Brain Freeze. Both could do a number on me. However, that deck is creature light, which means my soldiers won't have to power through much to lay on the damage. I can leave less mana untapped, since stuff like Smite and Swords to Plowshares will be less important. That leaves more mana for casting soldiers and that my Lightning Bolts will almost certainly be blows to the dome.

So the sideboard currently looks like this:

3 Red Elemental Blast
3 Pyroblast
2 Circle of Protection: Red
2 Feldon's Cane

I might also try just 4 REB and 2 Tormod's Crypt. Any deck hoping to reuse its graveyard in anyway would suffer from that.  I'd rather just remove those 2 Prosperities and a Brain Freeze from the game with a single card, than have them get shuffled back in and have to worry about countering them singly, in the future.

At any rate, I've still got 5 slots left. I'll probably head over to Cardshark.com and see what sorts of decks are popular in this format, so I can meta against them.

edit:
After doing a little bit of reading, the sideboard comes out looking like this:
4 Red Elemental Blast
1 Pyroblast
2 Feldon's Cane
2 Circle of Protection: Red
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Hallow
2 Awe Strike

The maindeck gets -2 Smite, +2 Guided Strike

I am also concerned that Mono-Black Control will be a problematical matchup. Since I expect large damage spells to be a bigger threat than large creatures, with this deck (I control combat, remember?), I would probably consider dropping the Awe Strikes for 2 Circle of Protection: Black or 2 more Hallow. If it turns out that creature heavy decks just aren't making an appearance at all, I would consider dropping Swords to Plowshares from the deck and Awe Strike from the sideboard, in favour of 3 sideboarded Greater Realm of Preservation, 3 sideboarded Hallow, and 3 Keeper of Kookus in the maindeck.

[Ephraim]

I played in a Peasant Tournament Sunday with the deck posted above. The only change to the maindeck was a second copy of Devout Witness, for 61 cards. I sounded out the other players the week leading up to the tournament and it was clear that Isochron Scepter was the uncommon of choice. This was what led me to use the second Devout Witness. My final sideboard was:

2 Circle of Protection: Red
3 Hallow
4 Pyroblast
2 Disenchant
2 Tormod's Crypt
2 Feldon's Cane

I was preparing for Frozen Tide, which would be the deck of choice for net-deckers, Isochron Scepter, and random red burn, this deck's particular weakness.

It was a tiny tournament, people at our store being unused to games on Sunday and to constructed tournaments. With only six entrants, we played Round Robin.

Match 1: U/G/R Madness/Threshold
Basking Rootwalla, Wild Mongrel, Ceta Sanctuary, and Kamahl's Desire were the keystones of this deck. It took me a long time to establish control, but I seldom felt truly pressured. My deck is designed to dominate in combat and it worked just fine. In the end, there's not a whole lot a finite creature base can do against an Isochron Scepter with Raise the Alarm, Swords to Plowshares, or Lightning Bolt on it. For game 2, I sided out 2 Crossbow Infantry for 2 Tormod's Crypt, which removed all doubt about the outcome of the game.
Outcome: 2-0

Match 2: U/W/G Iso-Control
This guy came prepared to deal with an aggro deck. An early Isochron Scepter with a Moment's Peace on it left me squirming. I had not found an answer by the time he got a second Isochron Scepter and put Razor Barrier on it. (It was then that I realized that Razor Barrier gives protection to any permanent). I still had enough burn to finish him off in the deck and he hadn't yet presented a win condition, so I didn't scoop. He cast Raise the Alarm and proceeded to give a Soldier token 2 Armadillo Cloaks and a Whispersilk Cloak. Game 1 went to him.

I sideboarded out 4 Crossbow Infantry and sided in 2 Disenchant and 2 Pyroblast (I knew he was packing Counterspell and Inertia Bubble).

In game 2, I came out swinging fast. He didn't see any of his Isochron Scepters and was forced to burn up 3 copies of Moment's Peace just to stay alive. I won this game handily.

Game 3, I got an early Scepter+Lightning Bolt, which he promptly Naturalized. However, I got him back when I disenchanted his first Isochron Scepter (+ Moment's Peace). That established enough of a tempo loss that I was able to put him into burn range. He got a second Scepter + Moment's Peace, but by that point, all I had to do was draw a few points of burn, which I did.
Outcome: 2-1

Match 3: U Iso-Control
I was dreading this particular matchup. Watching this guy's games, I knew he was playing a Scepter lockdown deck with no meaningful win conditions. In his first five games, he'd won once with a lucky draw and lost twice by decking himself. Fortunately, I got a turn 2 Scepter + Lightning Bolt in game 1 and there was nothing he could do. With the help of some creatures, he was dead 4 turns later. I sideboarded in 4 Pyroblasts and 2 Disenchants and took out 4 Crossbow Infantry and 2 Smite.

In game 2, I got a turn 3 Devout Witness, which meant that his Scepters were totally nullified. I got Scepter + Guided Strike shortly thereafter and with the help of some creature threats, eliminated him pretty quickly. Seems that my fears of an endless game were unfounded.
Outcome: 2-0

Match 4: W Weenie/Equipment
This match wasn't even fair. Game 1, I got a 3rd turn Devout Witness and didn't let him have a single piece of equipment or artifact creature for the rest of the game. That left precious few white creatures to deal with. It took a while to mop him up, since I played cautiously and spent a lot of my drawn cards as pseudo-disenchants, but I won eventually. I sided in 2 Disenchants and out 2 Crossbow Infantry.

Game 2, he got mana-screwed and I thrashed him quickly with a weenie horde.

Match 5: B/W Clerics
It wasn't life.dec (or at least, not that I saw), which made it a defensive aggro deck. There were lots of Battlefield Medics, Samite Healers, Samite Blessings, etc... These games went rather quickly. I could deal a lot of damage with creatures, before the clerics set up a defensive net. I could Swords to Plowshares key clerics and Bolt the rest. He couldn't keep enough creatures on the table at any time to hold me back. Both games were unremarkable creature beatdowns.
Outcome: 2-0

***

You may notice that in every game that I used my sideboard, I took out Crossbow Infantry. It's been nixed from the deck entirely. I simply have better ways of taking out creatures. That left me with 57 cards in the deck (recall, I went up to 61 cards), so I put in a third Devout Witness and a pair of Angelfire Crusaders, as well as changed the Plains/Mountains ratio from 13/7 to 11/9. The Crusaders are just a test right now, to see if a bit more aggression serves the deck well. If they don't work out, or I find myself missing the direct damage capacity of the Crossbow Infantry, I'll replace the Angelfire Crusaders with Spikeshot Goblins.

I've also removed the Disenchants from the sideboard and am searching for something to put in its place. I am considering a 4th copy of Hallow and a Circle of Protection: Black or simply 2 Circle of Protection: Black.

[M]

Strip Mine is uncommon.

[Ephraim]

Why yes, I'm well aware of that. I'm not really sure what it's relevance is. Are you suggesting I use it? It's a possibility, I suppose. Of my five uncommons which would you suggest I cut? (I have 3 Swords to Plowshares and 2 Isochron Scepter). Using Strip Mine would make the deck stronger against non-aggro decks, but I'm not really sure they're worth the loss of any of my other uncommons.

[M]

The following common cards count as uncommon cards:
Strip Mine

[Ephraim]

According to the card list at Crystal Keep, one of the Antiquities print runs of Strip Mine had it as a common.

[Jacob Orlove]

Strip Mine was a common AND an uncommon back in Antiquities.

[Cpt.Chaos]

Hi all,
i like this format. I was just testing two decks with my brother.
We tried to build a viable madness and affinity deck. While testing these against each other, the Affinity build looked a bit stronger.
That's what they look like now:


My Peasant U/G Madness Build

// Lands
    10 Forest
    10 Island

// Creatures
    4 River Boa (not a madness creature, but since roars are uncommen i use these)
    4 Wild Mongrel (obvious choice)
    3 Aquamoeba (would like to replace these, is there something better?)
    4 Arrogant Wurm (uncommon, i chose to run this one over roar of the wurm, because it is very nice with frantic search)
    4 Basking Rootwalla (nice one-drop with pump ability)
    1 Wonder (uncommon, lets your creatures fly...)

// Spells
    4 Rancor (the best pump spell around...)
    2 Careful Study (not as good as frantic search, but a good addition, i think)
    4 Deep Analysis (nice carddraw in madness decks)
    4 Frantic Search (nice with wurms )
    3 Lotus Petal (some acceleration & mana fixing...)
    3 Unsummon (some removal for aggro matchups)

// Sideboard
SB: 2 Ray of Revelation (best enchantment destruction in madness)
SB: 2 Feldon's Cane (vs. tide..)
SB: 4 Blue Elemental Blast (vs. burn/affinity)
SB: 4 Mana Leak (vs. tide or other combo)



My brother's Peasant R/B Affinity

// Lands  
    3 Swamp  
    4 Darksteel Citadel  
    4 Great Furnace  
    4 Vault of Whispers  
 
// Creatures  
    4 Disciple of the Vault  
    4 Atog  
    1 Arcbound Crusher  (uncommon)
    4 Ornithopter  
    4 Arcbound Worker  
    4 Myr Enforcer  
    4 Frogmite  
 
// Spells  
    4 Lotus Petal  
    4 Skullclamp  (uncommon)
    4 Duress  
    4 Dark Ritual  
    4 Skulltap  
 
// Sideboard  
SB: 4 Hunger of the Nim  
SB: 3 Terror  
SB: 4 Reckless Charge  
SB: 4 Hymn to Tourach

Has anyone suggestions on changes on these two decks?

[Ephraim]

Peasant Affinity is strong because many of the cards in Affinity are common to begin with. Of the uncommons there are often suitable/better non-Type-2 replacements available at the common level (for example, Counterspell, instead of Assert authority). I haven't really done much testing with Affinity myself, but I am assured that Bonesplitter is a must-have. As far as your deck goes, I think that Skullclamp is enough. You probably don't need Skulltap as well. You seem to be going with a fast, aggressive build, which is more successful in PEZ than it is in Type 2, because there's nothing like Akroma's Vengeance to worry about. You might be able to cut Duress, but if you want to keep it's that fine. I don't think you have the black mana in your deck to support Hymn to Tourach in the sideboard. You're mana light, which would lead me to suggest Mind Rot instead. It's a vastly inferior card, but easier for your manabase to handle.

As far as the Madness deck goes, I would go so far as to say 2 or 3 Naturalize in the maindeck. Right now, Isochron Scepter is everybody's favourite uncommon in PEZ, and you must have a way to deal with it. My experience is that making the Scepter into a fog machine is preferred tech, which will absolutely nullify anything your Madness deck can do. Basically, if you can't win before their second turn, you run a serious risk of being shut down completely. (For that matter, this same advice goes for your Affinity deck - have some way of dealing with Isochron Scepter with your worst nightmare on it, or you're going to lose, a lot.)

[Cpt.Chaos]

We changed the madness deck like this:
-3 Unsummon
+3 Echoing Truth

Sideboard
+3 Naturalize

That's 3 possibilities to get rid of a scepter maindeck plus 3 in the sideboard. I think that should be enough.

The R/B Affinity Build was changed as follows:
-4 Skulltap
-4 Duress
-4 Darksteel Citadel
+4 Tree of Tales
+4 Fling
+4 Bonesplitter

Sideboard
-1 Hunger of the Nim
-3 Terror
-4 Reckless Charge
+4 Duress
+4 Naturalize

Darksteel Citadels went out for Tree of Tales because of the 4 SB Naturalize. We put Duress to the SB and added fling, because it can get your atog past a fog and cutted the Skulltaps for Bonesplitters. In the sideboard we cut the terrors, reckless charges and a hunger of the nim for the duresses and naturalizes.

This should make these decks a bit more resistant to fog scepters.
But a card i still fear in this format is sinkhole. A black sui deck with duress, hymn to tourach, hypnotic specter, sinkhole and some other stuff could be really devastating, i think.

[Ephraim]

It's kind of a silly response to your concern, but I don't think you have to worry much about Sinkholes. Peasant does have a banned list that regulates the use of some of the most broken uncommons ever printed. Presumably Sinkhole might belong on that list as well. However, intuitions tells me that the people who are inclined to expend the resources to acquire Sinkholes are not the sort of people who are typically inclined to play Peasant Magic. I can do some more research on the topic if you'd like. I'll see if Sinkhole is commonly included in the various black PEZ decks posted around the 'net.

[Cpt.Chaos]

Well, it just didn't show up on your banned-list, so i thought it might actually get played. I mean, yes it is not cheap, but it's a common.

What do you think of the changes to the decks?
Do you think that fling is a good choice in the affinity build?

[M]

one of the Antiquities print runs of Strip Mine had it as a common.

Really? My mistake.

Anyway, a 'peasent' format is certainly interesting but I am sort of leaning towards banning cards on high price alone, and not uncommon/rare status. After all, lots of crap rares are so cheap that anyone could get them just by asking for them. Why ban such cheap cards, just because they are rare? And a card like sinkhole is a common. The 5-card uncommon limit seems arbitrary too. The point is, when an expansion is old, the rare/uncommon/common distinction loses most of its meaning (in the context of trying to filter out the cards that prevent 'peasents' from competing on the same level as everyone else). The peasents format would make more sense if applied to type 2 than to type 1.

[Ephraim]

I didn't make up the format; I just play it. I have a vague notion of the history of the format, though. According to legend (meaning this is purely hearsay), at one time, the deck building rules allowed 4 copies of one Uncommon and 1 copy of one Rare (or at least, the format was tested by its creators using those rules.) Apparently that didn't work out for them, so they just changed it to any 5 Uncommons. It's not quite so arbitrary when you think about it evolving from a playset of one Uncommon and a singleton Rare. Also, as has previously been mentioned, trying to regulate a format based on price would be a never ending job and people would try to manipulate the banned/restricted list by tinkering with the market. That wouldn't be cool. To make it simple, the format designers just went with the easy common/uncommon/rare delineations. Those never change.

As far as including all sets in Peasant, there was an article a while back at Wizards site on this. The format was created by people who small-ish collections of cards from the entire period they'd been playing. They created Peasant Magic to try to get the most use out of their cards as possible.

Finally, sure Sinkhole is a common and I'm sure it gets played. But if you think about a lot of the other cards that make Suicide Black so powerful (like Phyrexian Negator or Nantuko Shade), they're rare. Having all of Sui Black's disruption without any of the strong win conditions hampers the deck. I still haven't had time to do my research, as I said I'd do for Cpt. Chaos, but I'll see what Top 8'd at the Peasant tournament at GenCon 2003.

[M]

trying to regulate a format based on price would be a never ending job and people would try to manipulate the banned/restricted list by tinkering with the market

The 'never ending job' part is true for any changing format. And if DCI can maintain a T1 restricted list based on something as vaguely defined as 'brokenness' and 'the health of the format' then they can certainly make a banned list based on the comparatively simple concept 'market value'. I fail to see the problem here. It's not like dealers are going to have special Bazaar or Workshop midnight madness sales in an attempt to get those cards off the list. In any case the list would never be based on a single dealer's prices, so 'tinkering with the market' is not something individuals are likely to be able to do.

[swawagon]

go to www.pojo.com and link to the peasent for more decks and info. Jason Chapman has some good deck ideas and articles there.

Stripmine is indeed a common in AQ but the PEZ counsil has dubbed it an Uncommon.

Powerful Decks:::
MBC (discard, drainlife, pestilence)
Sui-Black (discard, weenies)
Stupid Red Burn (nearly all Bolts)
Brainfreeze-High Tide combo (Cloud of Faeries after hightide)
Channel-Fireball combo (4 Uncommon Channels)
Mono blue skies (Curiosity, Flying Men)
Sol Ring Green (4 Sol Ring, Llanowars, Tinderwall, Blastoderm)
WW (Suntail Hawk, Soltari Priest,
B/U animater (careful study, Exhume, Shoreline Ranger)
B/G Song (Counterspell, Gae's Blessing)

[Ephraim]

Okay, it's been a while since anybody said anything in this thread, but I figured I'd resurrect it. It is after all just the Casual Forum, so I beg the forgiveness of the moderators for my cheek and shall proceed nonetheless.

It should be of interest to those who've dabbled in Peasant Magic that Brain Freeze has recently been added to the banned list. To the best of my knowledge, it is the first card to have been banned for real-time power reasons. The rest, I believe, were banned before the format really took root, because of their price (which is, admittedly, a function of their power.)

This means that the High Tide combo deck is considerably less format-warping than it used to be. Although it still has Prosperity with which to work, Prosperity may be answered with common-level cards from at least three colours, meaning that the deck is still a contender, but not an 800-pound gorilla.

At present, a metagame-defining gauntlet is in progress among some of the players at the Brainburst boards, but some of the preliminary results indicate that there's actually the beginning of a three-axis metagame forming. Mono-black control beats High Tide; High Tide beats Scepter-Burn; Scepter-Burn beats Mono-black control.

I've certainly taken a renewed interest in the format since I realized that Fish ports over to Peasant remarkably well (see Fishstick, also in the Casual Forum.)

[Prometheus]

Isn't the Format broken by Affinity Decks?

Without Ravager I don't know if Discliple is that good but..

4 Thoughtcast
4 Skullclamp

4 Cranial Plating

4 Somber Hooverguard
4 Arcbound Worker
4 Arcbound Stinger
4 Frogmite
4 Myr Enforcer
4 Ornithopter
4 Disciple of the Vault

2 Paradise Mantle

1 Sol Ring
4 Vault of the Whispers
4 Seat of Synod
4 Darksteel Citadel
3 Island
2 Swamp

..this seems really powerful to me.

Perhaps red is better. But the you can board in Duress against High Tide.

[Ephraim]

Affinity is certainly a potent deck, but it isn't the overbearing aggro-combo deck that it is with Ravager. Typically, you're going to be pure aggro, which your build reflects. However, there is prevalent hate against artifacts, since many of the most feared uncommons are brown.

Red runs plenty of burn to handle your Frogmites and Disciples of the Vault. It packs four Shatters in the sideboard and has Isochron Scepter to make it stick.

Monoblack control might be a favourable matchup for you if you can get set up early. MBC's best defense against a creature swarm is Pestilence, which it won't always draw.

Most white weenie variants that I've seen have at least two Devout Witnesses in the maindeck. Granted, they may not be gaining any card advantage over you, but throwing away a Mesa Chicken to get rid of your Myr Enforcer is a worthwhile trade.

While a bit of Duress can help the High Tide matchup, remember that if you don't beat them quickly enough, they'll either draw a second High Tide or simply go off without it. 4x Frantic Search is incredibly potent, with or without High Tide.

To conclude, no, PEZ Affinity doesn't simply dominate the format.

[Matt]

[card]Extruder[/card] is a neat Ravager replacement, and you'd only need like three; however, I don't know if it can be squeezed in, primarily because I don't know what the deck-construction rules are, and you've already got Skullclamp filling four of your uncommon slots.

[Alfred]

Here's the 'Tog list that has been doing pretty well for me recently:

2x Lonely Sandbar
2x Barren Moor
9x Swamp
12x Island
3x Psychatog
4x Accumulated Knowledge
4x Counterspell
4x Brainstorm
4x Mana Leak
4x Diabolic Edict
3x Deep Analysis
3x Infiltrate
2x Force of Will
4x Dark Banishing

Obviously, it's important in this format to be able to deal effectively with creatures, so the 8 critter removal spells should be able to deal with this. I simply do not like frantic search in this deck, it's card disadvantage, and makes you make tough decisions with the deck. Deep analysis I like much better, though you may have to tap out in the early game, a 4 card boost is nothing to scoff at, plus is great with a 'Tog on the table. This plays out similar to the t2 version of the deck, but instead of upheaval, you have massive card drawing and lots of creature kill.