Dark Slide for my Extended campaign?

Ok, friends of mine know that I am a Magic: The Gathering nut. Sometimes even the girlfriend/fiancee/wife don't get how I can spend mucho moolah on pieces of cardboard but hey, it beats paying cash to smoke, gamble or drink, ain't it? Crap. Anyhow, am preparing for Extended format competitions coming my way in the next few weeks (there's one on 18th Dec at Serene Centre, come support me if you all want, haha) so I will be mostly spending weekends to test play new decks and right now, I am testing a new deck concept named Dark Slide, splashing a little Black into what is a normal Green/White Astral Slide Eternal Witness combo deck.

The post below is more of a documentation than anything, so some of you reading it may be lost but I must note all these down for posterity...

Before I start any further, here's my decklist that was used on the Sunday just passed.

Lands

Tranquil Thicket x 4
Secluded Steppes x 4
Windswept Heath x 3
Nantuko Monastery x 2
Overgrown Tomb x 1 (G/B)
Temple Garden x 2 (G/W)
Plains x 4
Forest x 4
Swamp x 1

25

Creatures

Eternal Witness x 4
Sakura-tribe Elder x 4
Eternal Dragon x 3
Loxodon Hierarch x 3

14

Spells

Astral Slide x 4
Gilded Light x 4
Renewed Faith x 1
Wrath of God x 4
Putrefy x 3
Wipe Clean x 3 (I will explain this choice below)
Life From The Loam x 2

21

Sideboard

Scrabbling Claws x 4
Cranial Extraction x 3
Boseiju, Who Shelters All x 2
Renewed Faith x 3
Fade From Memory x 3

Ok, the below is a brief recount of the matches I played as I did not keep accurate notes during the game and can only type from memory.

Game 1: UB Tog

Basically my opponent was pretty mana tight in the starting of the match and I raced ahead due to Elder, Dragons and Heath and took round 1 after beating down with a lone Monastery. (Point 1: these monastries are damn good against Tog coz they are big and they are hard to kill, if they target it with Smother, Slide the land out and return it untapped and you got a mana source back to boot! Good for cycling those Gilded Lights, you see. To those who feel that Elders are meh in the face of Wayfinders and Wood Elves, do not be foolish! Elders are really what Slide needs in the deck to just accelerate for turn three sick things like Wrath and Cranials!!)

Game 2: I sided in Boseiju and Cranials and start the beat down again. This time, I had Loxodons coming in to ensure my life totals stay healthy and allow them to just die from the 101 kill spells the Tog deck packs. However, a couple of turns later saw me digging for a Boseiju through some sorcery speed cycling (I was really needing an answer now coz a Tog just hit the board and my Slide got countered). I plonked the legendary land down and wished that my friend had no Boomerangs, which he didn't. Lo and behold on his end step I cycled for a Cranial top deck and Cranial-ed for all the damn Togs in his deck through the mana generated by Boseiju and dug out ALL three of the Toothy one from the deck leaving the only Tog on the table that was resolved earlier. Luckily, I managed to top deck a Putrefy off the top once again through cycling and pointed the power Golgari uncommon at the Tog during my turn for teh win!

(Cycling is a damn good mechanic since it trades useless cards for answers and lets you literally dig through your deck like a manic mole and that was how I found my Boseiju, Cranial E and Putrefy, I REALLY love cycling to bits now. I know this sounds like a no-brainer but Boseiju in SB is a MUST if you run all the Black disruptive spells like Cranial because if you resolve it, you have just made a BIG step towards winnin a match against Tog).

Dark Slide 2 : UB Classic Tog 0

Game 2: Scepter-Chant

This is a really bad match-up for Slide, I must say. In Round 1, I simply saw an Orim's Chant being imprinted on the Stick on turn three and didn't see the light of the day again. Needless to say, I scooped (because I kept not being able to find my Putrefies and I needed my Boseijus) and entered round 2.

Round 2 saw things getting a change for the better as I find an early Boseiju through digging once again courtesy of Cycling. The land got bounced once and that was it, it stayed unmolested for the rest of the game. I found a Cranial and Extracted for the Sticks. Phew! Next out went the Cunning Wish after a Witness regrew a Cranial and it was game.

Round 3: This time, I got really lucky and saw an opening hand with something like Forest, Swamp, Forest, Elder, Putrefy, Putrefy, Cranial Extraction. I drew into a third turn Loxodon Hierarch which incidentally resolved, telling me that my opponent may be light on counters. On turn four, I decided to be daring and tried to Cranial and it worked!!!!111!!! My opponent sighed and lamented that he should have cast the Scepter that he had on hand a few turns earlier (I saw why he didn't as he was rather light on the Blue mana as well, thus he may have thought that waiting a little longer for those Islands in order for his counter wall to be stronger was more important than casting the Scepter). Out went the Scepter he was holding on to as well as the three others in his deck. However, the game was not really wrapped yet as my opponent tried to fight back with two unmorphed Exalted Angels. I found a Boseiju before hand and Wrath-ed with impunity and laid an Elder which started his beatdown for 1 damage over several turns with no answer from across the table (it was sick and I felt bad about it)! Next came a cycled Decree of Justice for nine 1/1 soldiers that killed my attacking Elder. My opponent tried to do me in with the eight others but was met with a hard cast Renewed Faith for six since I have earlier Cranial-ed and saw that my opponent's hand held three counterspells and I made him waste them all with Witnesses and Cranial sans Boseiju, thereby letting him have no answers for my Faith for six. I later Wrath with Boseiju protection and he scooped.

Wow! Dark Slide wins another unwinnable match-up! Which my friend remarked later that Dark Slide is very viable indeed since I have overcame the two decks that I feared the most with pinache. Credit has to be given to my friend in case naysayers feel that he is a bad player or even cast doubts on his decks as his UB Tog and Scepter Chant decks are really very standard builds that have ALL the cards people use in their decks. My friend is an old-time player skilled in Control decks and he doesn't really make mistakes, thereby all these test results are real and accurate, I can assure you. However, one thing is for sure, Slide players should not feel overly optimistic about the No-Stick match-up even after reading this because No-Stick is really a matter of draw in Game 2 and 3 and if they managed to stabilize and resolve No-Stick. It's game, seriously. Period.

Dark Slide 2 : Scepter Chant 1

Later in the night, we decided to play UB Tog again versus Dark Slide because I felt that the first time around was due to luck and didn't want to go away big headed after one vistory. So we settled down and have another game.

I cannot remember the details about the second game now but I do remember the highlights. Game one saw me keeping off the Togs through Wraths and such and it was game because my friend ran out of counters. Game 2 saw me almost getting killed by a lone Wonder since I have Cranial-ed for Tog and Meloku (whom my friend sided in) and Boseiju-ed backed my spells for several times that dropped my life total to below 10. After sustaining three to four turns of beatings from the 2/2 flying Incarnation, I somehow managed to resolve an Astral Slide and Eternal Witness, topdecked a copy of Renewed Faith and cycled the Incarnation out everytime he tried to attacked and as you can see, my life hovered between four and two for some turns...it was so nervewrecking!!! Finally, I found another Renewed Faith and Loxodon Hierarch and my friend scooped. OMGBBQWTFLOL, Dark Slide beat Tog 2-0 again!!! I really don't know about this but maybe it's my luck that day.

However, looking back, I have got these to say. Dark Slide is clearly viable and regardless of what you all out there would want to say. I would recommend readers to retain whatever comments they want to say about Dark Slide first and try the deck out. In fact, Dark Slide has got what it takes to take on the meta right now. Here is where I explain the 3 copies of Wipe Clean in my deck. Basically, as I am building this version of the Dark Slide for the current meta, I added in the Wipe Cleans to help my Game 1 against the CAL and Heartbeat decks. I feel that if Dark Slide takes Game 1 against these nuisances, then we stand a very good chance Game 2 when we side in the Cranials and all that jazz. Furthermore, even if the match-up was not CAL and Heartbeat, Dark Slide can still cycle away the Wipe Cleans for no cost at all and still trigger off a cycle effect from Astral Slide. Thus, Wipe Cleans are never really dead cards although you can say that its cycling cost is a little steep if you really want to nit-pick. Wipe Clean is my own secret tech against those enchantment-based combo decks. Hell, it's even good in the mirror! If that's not tech, I don't know what is...

For those who still harbor pessimistic views on the Tog and No-Stick match-ups, take heart, because if you splash Black to Slide, you can overcome them. Even if you still insist to splash Red, it's still winnable.

The key is to just play aggressively albeit smartly and have no Fear (there's this article by Dan Paskins a while ago that I read about not being afraid of Counterspells and just play your game), in this way, you force the Tog or Scepter player to respond. If they do, that's one less counterspell to worry about. If they don't, hell, you get to resolve your spell! So tell me, what's there to fear about Counterspells??

To round up, although I have to say that both Red and Black splashes have their merits and de-merits (I loved both versions of Slide really), I can generally offer an advice to players who want to field Slide.

1) If your field is mostly Aggro, field the Red splash, it will tear the weenie decks to shreds.

2)If your meta is full of combo/control (and in fact the currrent meta is), then the Black splash is needed for the disruption.

**For information of what those cards that I mentioned in this post do, you can check them out with this link, http://gatherer.wizards.com/gathererlookup.asp?name=cranial+extraction. Just type in the name of the cards in my decklist and check them out if you are interested. :)