{"id":522,"date":"2018-08-30T14:07:59","date_gmt":"2018-08-30T12:07:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/premodernmagic.com\/blog\/?p=522"},"modified":"2018-08-30T14:07:59","modified_gmt":"2018-08-30T12:07:59","slug":"from-extended-to-premodern-a-story-about-atogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/premodernmagic.com\/blog\/from-extended-to-premodern-a-story-about-atogs\/","title":{"rendered":"From Extended to Premodern: A Story About Atogs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today we have a guest post from I\u00f1aki Puigdollers from Barcelona, Spain. If you’re in the International Premodern Facebook group<\/a>, you might have noticed his deck techs and reports from their weekly tournaments, which are held at the store Ingenio<\/a>. In this post, he digs deeper into the Psychatog archetype. Enjoy! \/ Martin<\/em><\/p>\n

The importance of a playgroup<\/h2>\n

It all started by end of March 2018, when a good friend of mine shared with me the link to this website. My first reaction was: \u201cI want to play Extended again!\u201d, but later I realized that it would be a lot more exciting than just that.\u00a0I\u2019ve been, like most of us, playing Magic in and out for several years but lately I was focused on Old School 93\/94<\/a>, until I came across Premodern. It seems that I have a clear preference for NONO formats (NOstalgic Non-Official).<\/p>\n

I started sending whatsapps here and there and some people answered the call starting to create a snowball effect that ended up in a mid-size community (around 20 people) interested in Premodern.\u00a0A couple of months later we convinced a local store (InGenio) to start running tournaments. How could they deny having Psychatog<\/a>s, Survival of the Fittest<\/a> and Goblin Lackey<\/a>s running rampant over the board once again!?<\/p>\n

And there I found myself, full of excitement but no idea on how to start, so I did what I always do: document myself. I started digging through the website to understand how were the different Extended metagames that comprised 1995\u20132003. After filtering out all the unplayable ideas due to the limitations of this \u201cnew version of Extended\u201d, namely all decks that depend enormously on currently banned cards or out-of-the-format like Miracle Gro, I set my eye on three decks: Hatred, Trix and Psychatog. I could write four-page articles for all three decks but today I\u2019ll focus on the latter because with that deck I almost gave up and I\u2019ve been on the brink of qualifying it for completely useless after several iterations, but with my last effort I found a formula that worked!<\/p>\n

Before moving forward, I want to say that making this deck work wouldn\u2019t been possible without the help of my playgroup. In particular, three good friends that helped me, every one in his own way, developing the final deck list. Thanks Alex, Ignasi and Xavi!<\/p>\n

Lessons from the past<\/h2>\n

This was the first thing I did to start inspiring myself.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

I found lots of decklists that performed very well during the Extended seasons. Of course, some of them do not really apply for what I was looking for (e.g. all the \u2018Tog-Scepter lists). All those lists were mainly split into UB and UBR lists. This was my first important decision. Going two-color seemed more sound and robust, especially in an environment without the original dual lands, but Fire \/\/ Ice<\/a> and Pyroblast<\/a> are both very strong cards. Moved partially by my love for the UB combination and partially because I always loved solid mana bases I decided to go with the two-color build and started studying the following lists:<\/p>\n

Masters 2003 Yokohama: Eugene Harvey\r\n\r\n12 Island\r\n4 Polluted Delta\r\n3 Swamp\r\n4 Underground River\r\n4 Psychatog\r\n4 Accumulated Knowledge\r\n4 Brainstorm\r\n4 Counterspell\r\n3 Cunning Wish\r\n1 Deep Analysis\r\n3 Fact or Fiction\r\n2 Intuition\r\n3 Mana Leak\r\n4 Smother\r\n1 Thwart\r\n3 Duress\r\n1 Upheaval\r\n\r\nSideboard\r\n2 Annul\r\n1 Capsize\r\n1 Corpse Dance\r\n2 Deep Analysis\r\n1 Diabolic Edict\r\n1 Fact or Fiction\r\n1 Mana Short\r\n4 Powder Keg\r\n1 Shadow Rift\r\n1 Vampiric Tutor<\/pre>\n
Pro Tour Houston 2002: Peter Myrvig\r\n\r\n13 Island\r\n4 Polluted Delta\r\n2 Swamp\r\n4 Underground River\r\n4 Psychatog\r\n1 Wonder\r\n4 Accumulated Knowledge\r\n3 Boomerang\r\n4 Brainstorm\r\n4 Counterspell\r\n2 Cunning Wish\r\n3 Fact or Fiction\r\n4 Force Spike\r\n3 Intuition\r\n4 Memory Lapse\r\n1 Upheaval\r\n\r\nSideboard\r\n3 Annul\r\n1 Diabolic Edict\r\n4 Engineered Plague\r\n1 Fact or Fiction\r\n2 Gainsay\r\n1 Hibernation\r\n1 Misdirection\r\n1 Teferi's Response\r\n1 Turnabout<\/pre>\n
Grand Prix Seattle 2005: Taylor Putnam\r\n\r\n16 Island\r\n4 Polluted Delta\r\n3 Swamp\r\n4 Psychatog\r\n4 Accumulated Knowledge\r\n3 Brainstorm\r\n4 Counterspell\r\n4 Cunning Wish\r\n2 Fact or Fiction\r\n3 Foil\r\n3 Gush\r\n4 Intuition\r\n2 Mana Leak\r\n4 Sapphire Medallion\r\n\r\nSideboard\r\n1 Brain Freeze\r\n1 Capsize\r\n1 Coffin Purge\r\n1 Dominate\r\n1 Echoing Truth\r\n3 Energy Flux\r\n3 Engineered Plague\r\n1 Fact or Fiction\r\n1 Ghastly Demise\r\n1 Rebuild\r\n1 Shadow Rift<\/pre>\n
What all three decks have in common is:<\/p>\n