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For an old-ish timer like me it was great watching Osyp win the Open this weekend in Baltimore, though his deck choice was rather boring. The deck that I and many others were rooting for was the Crush of Tentacles value deck that Cory Dissinger cracked the Top 8 with as the first seed. Unfortunately, Cory didn't make it past the quarterfinals, but his performance in the swiss was nonetheless very impressive. His deck looks quite odd, but there's a lot to like about it:
Simic Crush
If you get to enough mana, you can play a face down Den Protector, flip it up, and recast Crush of Tentacles every turn! Of course, that's just one of many things that this deck does. More commonly your value chain will be focused around Pulse of Murasa and Den Protector. The minor delirium theme also adds a lot to the deck, as Ishkanah, Grafwidow is one of the best value cards in Standard, and Emrakul, the Promised End is arguably the best creature that you could be casting.
Some of the numbers look very odd. I'd be inclined to find space for the fourth Oath of Nissa, I don't really understand a 2-1 Jace-Elvish Visionary split, and I really don't get why this deck wants a Bounding Krasis hanging out, but these criticisms are very minor.
Noose Constrictor is an odd choice considering that the deck doesn't have any madness spells, though there's a lot to like about this include as well. Constrictor blocks all the Spell Quellers that are rampant in the format, and can even trade with an Archangel Avacyn if you don't mind pitching a couple cards. This deck is pretty good at making up card advantage, and can afford to pitch a card here and there. It's also nice to be able to enable delirium with this discard outlet, and the card definitely surprised me this weekend.
Crush of Tentacles has surged all the way up to about $6, which is probably about right for a fringe playable Standard deck. If a more refined version shows up and holds a significant share of the metagame there could be more growth from here, though I'd be more inclined to sell or trade off copies that I had at this point in time.
