The Icy WinterSmoke of Life

I first though about writing something about The Book Deck; maybe muse a little about card advantage and quote something fundamental from Robert Hanh's "Schools of Magic" (section Weissman). It is a very sweet deck, and a good evolution of control, but I think that Viktor "Oldschool" Peterson's new deck is even more interesting. Viktor constantly manages to surprise at tournaments with sweet new tech; his previously abused cards include All Hallow's Eve, Lich, Field of Dreams and Living Plane. This time he turned to the Smoke and Ivory Tower.

Kingen told a story about facing the deck. Viktor had played an Ivory Tower on turn one, which Kingen neglected to destroy with Disenchant, instead opting to cast an Ice Storm (or similar) on Viktors lone land. The next turn, Viktor dropped a land and proceeded to cast Lotus and two Copy Artifact. The beatdown plan got even harder for Kingen as the game progressed.

Five Ivory Towers beats one Black Vise.

In the very, very late game; Viktor have about 120 life and 5 cards left in the library. Kingen still had 8 cards left in his deck, but Viktor managed to resolve a Balance, making him discard 3 cards to the top of his library using Library of Leng, giving him the edge in the decking race. To make a tense and long story short; Kingen then resolved Ancestral, Fork, Regrowth, Ancestral; showcasing the restricted list and forcing Viktor to draw his library.

Kingen winning the game while doing his best Zak Dolan impression.

At the Kingvitational tournament, Viktor lost against Elof in the first round and against the eventual winner Henrik in the last, winning his other two matches. He stated that he built the deck just after n00bcon, and didn't find the time to tune the deck before the tournament. For his out-of-the-box creations this usually means the difference between a median finish and a top4 finish; e.g. Demonic Tutor would have been a nice include that he stated he simply forgot to put in the deck before shuffling up.

The Icy WinterSmoke of Life is still a very impressive deck, and I hope we'll see an even more tuned version more of it at BSK. Here it is in all its glory:

Note that more than half of the deck is signed (not the least his sideboard Shark).