1st Place in Week One of MPDC League Season 4

So despite my best intentions, I didn't manage to get a second blog post done last week. I ended up traveling during the middle of the week, and with my kids all on an extended school break, my time in front of the computer was limited. However, I did want to cover the winning deck from the first week of the new season of the MPDC League, so I figured I would go ahead and get this up today, even though it's several days too late. But better late than never.

For our first week of Season 4 of the MPDC League, Polyjak's Temur Energy deck went 5-0 to earn its 1st place spot. While there's lots of things going on in this deck, its primary path to victory is to create a host of Thopter tokens from Whirler Virtuoso, backed up with several other strong creatures and some potent removal spells. Let's take a look at Polyjak's list:

Obviously the deck's gameplan revolves around creating lots of Energy, and it has several strong ways of doing so. Aether Hub, Attune with Aether, Harnessed Lightning, Rogue Refiner, Servant of the Conduit, and Whirler Virtuoso all produce Energy tokens when they come into play, while  Longtusk Cub gives the deck the ability to produce even more over time. Generally speaking, all that Energy goes to fuel a mass of Thopter tokens, but can also help make Longtusk Cub into a monstrous threat. Or, when all else fails, you can simply smash into your opponent with your diverse threats, utilizing the Falter-effect of Ahn-Crop Crasher to push through damage at an opportune time.

For removal, this deck makes good use of both Abrade and Harnessed Lightning, the former which also gets good use as Artifact-hate. While you only have eight copies between them, generally this will be enough to deal with your opponent's most important threats.

The deck's diverse mana requirements are easily filled by its six enters-the-battlefield-tapped dual lands as well as the fixing provided from Aether Hub and Servant of the Conduit.

Out of the Sideboard, the deck has a nice suite of permissions spells in nearly a full playset of both Negate and Essence Scatter. It also includes Sentinel Totem to help with Graveyard recursion, Appetite for the Unnatural for more Artifact or Enchantment hate, and Raging Swordtooth to give you some options against rival token strategies or just a big beater to throw at your opponent.

While I loved what this deck was doing and certainly couldn't argue with its success, in my own testing it seemed to keep coming up short. So for my own foray back into the league, I developed and piloted my own version of the deck. That's what I want to talk about next time.