Extending the hand if you haven’t ever heard that term is the act of shaking your opponents hand at the end of a game as a sign of respect and good sportsmanship. I have extended the hand a numerous amount of times to many people and followed it with the comment of “good game”. The rant today is about when is it not the right time to say good game. Many people will out of habit just say “good game” when the game is over. I wont say “good game” when you have just been mana screwed and you are obviously upset or you just couldn’t draw creatures and I would hope that you would do the same. So what is the you opinion on this matter. Send me your thoughts and let me know some of your experiences. I would like to here them and may share some of them with the other readers.

I also wanted to include the best sign of good sportsmanship I have ever seen in this rant. Jeff Zandi of the Pojo writing staff had his 2000^th loss this weekend. Now for some people they would think that this is a bad thing to celebrate, but how many of you can remember what win or loss that you are celebrating. Jeff is an amazing individual that keeps track of just about every kind of milestone that he has celebrated in his PDA. When he had this loss he actually had a prize package for his opponent and had a friend of mine take a picture with him for posterity. The fun didn’t end there, it also got told to the tournament organizer and was announced over the speaker system for all to hear. Jeff Zandi is my friend and I will always hold him in the highest regard as long as he continues to be the way he acted this weekend. He is now listed in my book as the Most Sportsmanlike Person in the World. Props to Jeff Zandi on his 2000^th loss and the way he accepted it. Well enough of this rant on with the deck fix. What follows is the email I received for this deck fix.

So looking at the email I was sent I instantly noticed that there were some faster and better creatures that could make the deck better. I added four Slith Firewalker because it seems many decks have trouble with a turn one or even turn two Firewalker. Three Wretched Anurid also gives this deck the ability to have a 3/3 on turn one or two which is always nice in my opinion. The Nantuko Husk is in the deck as a way of removing the Wretched Anurid if you get two low on life. The Nantuko Husk is also a way of getting a large creature to use with the Grab the Reins in case you don’t have a Wall of Blood. I removed the Severed Legion and Spikeshot Goblin because they are too small and slow to be truly effective. The Severed Legion has fear but with artifacts being so prevalent in magic today you cant depend on it. The Spineless Thug is a cheap hitter but with no ability to block it really can be a drawback when you need it most.

Looking at the spells I only found that I would want a little more room for removal to get creatures out of the way. I lowered the count on the Consume Spirit because its only doing damage when you reach three mana and when you start needing to kill thing on turn four you cant really kill more than a 2/2 with it. So now having a little room for more cards I added a couple of Dark Banishing. You could use Terror in the place of the Dark Banishing but I prefer to wait the extra turn to use it so that I can hit artifact creatures as well.

In the artifacts I didn’t change much. I only decided that by adding in four Chrome Mox the deck could be sped up immensely and give a real advantage if you want to kill early. The key with using the Chrome Mox is just not to play it early if you don’t have the card to follow it up with. I have seen many a player cast the Chrome Mox on turn one with nothing in there hand that can be played for two mana. If you cant cast something don’t waste a spell on the imprint of the Chrome Mox until you see the next draw. Most counter decks wont usually spend a counter magic spell on Chrome Mox if they don’t have a credible threat that they know about, such as a kill spell that will win the game. I left the four Pyrite Spellbomb because with the land count being so low the card draw ability of the Pyrite Spellbomb can help you dig deeper into the deck for a necessary land. The Bonesplitter were left alone because he wants to hit fast and hard. If the deck has consistent problems drawing the needed mana I would remove one of the Bonesplitters and put in another Mountain.

All in all I think that the deck will definitely run faster and be able to hit harder in the early turns. I didn’t include a sideboard fix because there was no mention of what he had trouble with and no existing sideboard. I’m sure that with the current meta game a sideboard would need to consist of four Shatter, three Sulfuric Vortex, three Persecute, two Terror, and three Cabal Interrogator. This should give a broad coverage of the decks out there but should be tuned to the decks that you are most commonly facing. It may not be the best deck for a high level tournament but this deck is a going to be lot of fun.