Rare Hunter 666

Rare Hunter's Hunting Grounds

No-Stick

Your opponent attempts to cast a game ending spell, and you have no counters in hand. But, you hit him/her in the head with a big stick, and say no. If only it where this easy, right? Well, with this deck it is. This deck is based around Isochron Scepter, or the stick, and using two CMC instants in order to control the opponent. It is blue and white based, with a splash of red, usually in the form of Lightning Helix. The deck has two different variations within the archetype: The Telling Time Draw Engine, or the Thirst for Knowledge Draw Engine. Some like Telling time due to the imprint ability, some like Thirst for the Card Advantage. I personally prefer Thirst. With Chrome Mox, its quite useful. Now, lets look at a sample list, and go from there. Next to each non-land card, you can see a short explanation on why it was included. {Lands}[20] [4] Flooded Strand [2] Sacred foundry [4] Adarkar Waste [4] Plains [4] Island [2] Steam Vents {Creatures}[3] [2] Exalted Angel - Good win condition [1] Eternal Dragon - Card Advantage and Recurring beatstick aswell.  {Spells}[37] [4] Chrome Mox - Mana acceleration is good in this deck. Can be pitched to TfK [4] Thirst For Knowledge - Card drawing is good. Can pitch Moxen late game. [2] Fact or Fiction - Pure card advantage. [4] Counterspell - Best counter in Extended. [4] Mana Leak - Good counter. Early game it is a hard counter, late game its can still be good. [3] Absorb - Hard counter, and helps against aggro match ups [3] Wrath Of God - Great against aggro [3] Lightning Helix - Win condition when on a stick, and is a pain for BDW to deal with. [3] Cunning Wish - Toolboxes are good. Ups the Chant count to seven basically. [3] Orim's Chant - Part of the lock in this deck. [4] Isochron Scepter - The Stick. The basis of the deck. Now the sideboard. Most of it is the Wishboard. The Kataki’s help the Affinity match up, and even the control match up a little. Most of this should be self explanatory. {Sideboard}[15] [3] Kataki, War's Wage [1] Starstorm [1] Stifle [1] Muddle The Mixture [1] Fact or Fiction [2] Disenchant [1] Urza's Rage [1] Brain Freeze [1] Orim's Chant [1] Lightning Helix [1] Wing Shards [1] Echoing Truth Other cards you may like to try out are Morning Tide because of Ichorid and Tog, Fire/Ice over Lightning Helix. Match ups: Affinity: Game one the will probably win. Chant is your best out here, because they just play too many threats, and have ravager as well. Games 2 and three you should win. I would say this match up is 60/40 in your favor. Boros Deck Wins: Not on of your best match ups. Helix on a stick, or chant are your best outs here. They just play too much for you to counter. But, if you can drop a stick on turn one, you should be able to pull the win off. 50/50 seems to be about the odds. Ichorid: You have few outs against this deck. Helix on a stick will slow them down to the point you can Cunning Wish for Brain freeze for the win. Also, Chant is your other out here. One of Ichy’s worst match ups, and its still only 60/40 in your favor. Tog: This match up is one of your worst I think. The Therapies and Duresses, make this one hard. So does the fact they can counter your Scepters, and just go lethal before you can with your Angels or Dragon. Its about 60/40 in their favor. CAL: This is probably your best match up. They have Therapy, yes. But, they are combo based, and just can’t seem to handle to many counters. They have no outs against the lock. But, if they resolve a Cranial Extraction, the game becomes more in their favor. I would say, as would Oliver Ruel, that its 70/30 in your favor. Heartbeat: Again, one of our better match ups. If played correctly, you should be bale to win with relative ease. Their main out for stalling for time won’t help much, with burn on a stick. Watch out for Boseju, and Mana Short though. 60/40, your favor. Tooth: Again, combo based decks should be easier for you. This decks main threats are Mindslaver and a Darksteel Colossus. Wing Shards should deal with oen, while counter magic should deal with the other. 60/40 your favor. Aggro Rock: Bad match up here. Fast beats, with control, and hard to kill trolls make this is pretty bad. They are just fast, and can produce answer of their own. Its just hard when they hit you once with a Specter, and hit you with specter and Therapy twice in turn three. 30/70, in the other guys favor. Sorry about the delay guys, family issues and standardized testing threw me off. You know how much those things suck. Next week we take a look at Heartbeat.