DECK TECH - 8Trap, or 8Crab, or 8Rav
Against all odds, got first place at the league AGAIN. This deck has some similarities to last week's, but actually has remarkably little overlap in cards-played (just 4x Prismatic, 3x Harrow). Again, we're playing off of the creature-axis to throw off our opponents. Unlike last week though, we don't want to play a long game. We want to mill our opponent's deck as fast as possible!
There's 3.... or, 3.5 cores to this deck.
CORE I: 8Crab
This has been a staple tier-2 core in the format since before I joined in. Hedron Crab + Fetches has been a rogue staple since it was printed back in Zendikar. Fetchlands are the best fixing in our format anyways, so we're happy to play 12 to double the effectiveness of our little critters. Snow Crab is much worse, but is a good blocker and still helps us count to 60. We play snow lands for him.
CORE II: Removal
We don't play a ton of removal, but we have some primo shit. Dead of Winter is an extremely powerful wipe, and was quite prevalent before there was a ban on Arcum's Astrolabe. However, even labeless, it helps us clear threatening early boards and give us time to win. We're playing snow anyways, and it doesn't even kill our best blockers. Speaking of anyways, because the format only has enemy fetches, both our blue and black fetches overlap on green, making the splash for Abrupt Decay just kind of fall out of the manabase on its own. It's a pretty key card for hitting noncreature threats like Aria of Flame, Oath of Druids, or Survival of the Fittest.
CORE III: 8Trap
Archive trap is our heaviest mill-hitter in the deck. Slamming in for a whopping 13 cards, a playset of these literally wins the game on their own. Sadly, we can't draw all of them. However..... we can search for more! Trapmaker's snare is my new spin on some old Archive Trap/Crab lists, effectively doubling our reach of Archive Traps for the low cost of 2 mana. Since fetchlands are dominating the manabases of FS7, it's almost always a freecast, or the hardcast will win in the endgame.
CORE III.5: 8Trap, Part 2, AKA 8Rav
Now.... since we're playing a trap tutor, we might as well play some more.... and there's plenty of pretty good pieces for a toolbox! Lethargy and Ravenous are the clear winners here, with the former shoring up aggro matchups considerably, and the latter hosing the numerous graveyard decks that would otherwise only be fed by us. Usually, these would all be sideboard options, but we get the chance to pre-board them, gaining us some game-1 wins.
SIDEBOARD
Our sideboard consists of 3 more copies of each of the above traps, as well as 3x Grafdiggers Cage. Cage primarily is here to stop Oath of Druids and Hogaak, but helps a bit against some prominent Green Sun's Zenith and Flashback plays. Notably, each trap in the sideboard has an amplified presence due to the tutor -- after board, we can effectively play 8 copies of Ravenous Trap, truly shredding the many, many decks weak to it in the format.
