Archenemy - The "Deckbuilder's Toolbox" for EDH players?

Take a look around you. Do you see all those guys (and some girls) grouped together? They're playing multiplayer. How do you know? Well, because it's the "Summer of Multiplayer", of course! What else would they be doing? Wizards have decided to regale us with a continuous stream of additional product since the beginning of last year. We've had Duel Decks (Goblins & Elves, Jace & Chandra, Garruk & Liliana, Phyrexia & the Coalition and soon Elsbeth & Tezzeret), we've had From the Vaults (Exiled & Dragons with Relics following this summer), we've had foil boosters (mixed Alara Block), Premium Decks (Slivers) and, of course, Planechase. That's a lot of additional product on top of the usual 4 set releases. Why are we getting all of this extra stuff?

The basic idea behind it is to generate interest in the game above and beyond the release of a new set. All products are not going to appeal to all players equally so, while you may not care about Slivers, you may be really excited about Relics. And, if neither of those interests you, there's surely another product in addition to the base set and the current block that you can go into your shop and order or pre-order. And the best thing about all of this stuff?

Each product is mostly produced with existing ideas with an added hook: In Planechase it was a Multiplayer concept, in the Duel decks it's foil Planeswalkers or other interesting cards married with iconic rares from previous sets. In FTV we've seen product that's generally hard to get your hands on repackaged, foiled and sometimes furnished with new art all sold together at a very attractive MSRP. For the summer of 2010 and riding the huge popularity wave that EDH has generated for multiplayer games, Wizards have come up with an exciting concept to follow on from the chaos-filled Planechase and that is Archenemy.



What is Archenemy? It's a set of 4 different boxes with a 4 different 60 card decks each built to a theme and accompanied by 20 "Scheme" cards. The idea is simple: You take the deck provided, gather a few friends and they work together, as a team, to try to kill you. You have the advantage of starting with 40 life rather than the usual 20 and you go first, drawing on your first turn. In addition, at the start of each of your turns, you turn over a Scheme card from the top of the Scheme pile and carry out the instructions on it. You draw extra cards, you deal damage, there's lots of fun things you can do that your team of opponents need to find a way around.

Now, I can see a couple of you scratching your heads as if you've seen all this before. Well, it should if you're ever dabbled in either the DC/Marvel Vs System or WOW TCGs, this product is a very close clone of their "Raid" deck: One Vs Many with oversized action cards that benefit the "One" to be turned over at the start of each turn. The fact that Wizards are bringing out 4 versions at once suggests that the product they are providing, while not necessarily a walk in the park, may be less Machiavellian than the twisted Raids that UDE served up. Then again, I may be wrong and we're in for a torrid season of trying and failing to beat the Undead Apocalypse, Doomsday Machine or whatever.

What's our interest as EDH players in this, or any, additional product aside from simply playing it out of the box? Well, it reminds me strikingly of another additional products that Wizards released not too long ago called "The Deckbuilder's Toolbox". This is an expert level product designed to provide beginners with a card base wide and relevant enough to construct the bones of a Standard/Type 2 deck. It's not something that I would suggest to someone starting out in EDH and looking for EDH staples, the random nature of the contents and the very nature of EDH decks spanning the history of Magic doesn't suggest that, unless you are very, very lucky, you're not going to be using it as a base to start your EDH decks.

Archenemy, however, is an entirely different affair. You know what you're getting for a start so you can purchase your product tailored to your particular deck needs, but, more importantly, the quality of the content all the way down from Rare to Common is so high for a player with a limited collection trying to get into EDH that the entire Archenemy set, all 4 decks, is something that I would recommend collection impoverished EDH hopefuls to consider acquiring very seriously. The number of playable EDH cards is extremely high. Let's have a look at what I consider the weakest of the decks EDH-wise and see how it measures up.

Scorch The World With Dragonfire



CREATURES (19)
1 Skirk Marauder
1 Taurean Mauler
1 Fierce Empath
2 Dragonspeaker Shaman
1 Skirk Commando
1 Battering Craghorn
2 Dragon Whelp
2 Furnace Whelp
1 Chameleon Colossus
1 Gathan Raiders
1 Ryusei, the Falling Star
1 Flameblast Dragon
1 Hellkite Charger
1 Two-Headed Dragon
1 Imperial Hellkite
1 Kilnmouth Dragon

OTHER SPELLS (17)
2 Gruul Signet
1 Breath of Darigaaz
1 Dragon Breath
2 Dragon Fodder
1 Colossal Might
2 Seething Song
1 Volcanic Fallout
2 Branching Bolt
1 Fires of Yavimaya
1 Thran Dynamo
1 Chandra’s Outrage
1 Fireball
1 Savage Twister

LANDS (24)
17 Mountain
5 Forest
2 Kazandu Refuge

Ok, we have a Dragon theme happening here. This is the weakest deck for me because, if your thing is not Dragons, there's less outside of the flappy, scaled, fire-breathing reptiles in this deck that you'll want to put into your EDH decks. If Dragon's are your thing, then there's a lot of good happening here. Let's look at them and their related cards first:

2 Dragonspeaker Shaman
2 Dragon Whelp
2 Furnace Whelp
1 Ryusei, the Falling Star
1 Flameblast Dragon
1 Hellkite Charger
1 Two-Headed Dragon
1 Imperial Hellkite
1 Kilnmouth Dragon

Little Dragons, Big Dragons, guys that make your dragons cheaper; we're pretty happy with this lot. There's even a potential general in there, the Legendary Ryusei making an appearance. In a dedicated EDH Dragon deck, I could see cutting the Whelps but I wouldn't fault anyone for including all the other 7 cards.

1 Skirk Marauder
1 Gathan Raiders
1 Skirk Commando
1 Battering Craghorn

Next we have a confusing sub-theme of morph dudes. I'm sure you could get a Gathan Raiders into a dedicated aggro deck but the rest aren't great (neither in EDH nor any other multiplayer deck to be honest)

1 Taurean Mauler
1 Fierce Empath
1 Chameleon Colossus

Rounding out the creatures are 3 multiplayer all-stars: Taurean Mauler is a dumb beast but he's also a dumb Dragon, dumb Goblin, dumb Elf or whatever you want him to be, Sailor! [insert inappropriate joke here. Oh, I already did!] He grows with each spell cast and, if he's not dealt with early, can become quite the monster. Sure, he was in Planechase so the reprint is not as exciting as it could be, but that doesn't change his usefullness. If you're playing red and have a creature slot free, the Mauler is a real threat.

Fierce Empath is a 1/1 for 3, not a good deal by any means, but he is also a tutor for fat dudes which explains his presence beside the Dragon Hordes here. If you're suing him elsewhere, he also finds Beasts, Elementals or any other fat thing you need; he's not biased, he just loves the fat.


And Chamelion Colossus? Wow! A chase rare from Lorwyn and holder of the largest single recorded EDH creature win of all time? Yes! I'll have one of those. He's got Pro-black, that's very relevant. He's a Changeling, which means he's everything else as well. And finally he doubles his P/T for 2GG as many times as you want, what's not to like?

Just a note on the price, the MSRP for this product is $19.99. I've seen sites offer this on pre-order for as low as $15.00. I took a random popular game site and checked out the prices on these singles. Excluding the little morph suite and taking the worst condition/lowest price on just the other 15 cards we've seen so far, my best price is €21.65 so, even before you leave the creatures section of this deck and obv. excluding the Scheme cards, you are up on what the originals of these cards are available for. From this point on, each card you see in this deck is essentially free. Sure, you'd have to have wanted to buy exactly these cards in the first place to gain full value, but the point stands that what you're getting is well below the current market value.

The rest of the deck is not terribly exciting from an EDH pov., thus the "worst of the lot" moniker I'm giving plastering on but you do get Gruul Signet, Volcanic Fallout, Fires of Yavimaya, Thran Dynamo (a $3 uncommon) & Savage Twister all of which are very playable in EDH.

Overall, if you're a fan of Dragons and want to add some + benefits to your EDH deck for very little, this is a product you will get a lot of milage out of. Personally, I'm not a fan of Dragons but, I'll happily add them to my collection as trade fodder while creaming off Thran Dynamo, Chameleon Colossus, Fierce Empath for EDH and a Skirk Marauder for my C/U Cube.

Why don't we work ourselves upwards in terms of power? Next on the list is our plans to Trample Civilisation Underfoot:


CREATURES (23)
1 Leaf Gilder
2 Sakura Tribe Elder
1 Shinen of Life's Roar
2 Wall of Roots
1 Watchwolf
1 Selesnya Guildmage
2 Fertilid
1 Hunting Moa
2 Yavimaya Dryad
1 Forgotten Ancient
1 Thelonite Hermit
2 Wickerbough Elder
1 Kamahl, Fist of Krosa
1 Verdeloth the Ancient
1 Pale Recluse
1 Krosan Tusker
1 Molimo, Maro-Sorcerer
1 Feral Hydra

OTHER SPELLS (13)
1 Fog
1 Rancor
1 Spider Umbra
1 Path to Exile
1 Gleeful Sabotage
1 Plummet
1 Heroes' Reunion
2 Oblivion Ring
1 Armadillo Cloak
1 Harmonize
1 Primal Command
1 Wax/Wane

LANDS (24)
10 Forest
5 Plains
1 Graypelt Refuge
1 Khalni Garden
1 Krosan Verge
1 Llanowar Reborn
1 Mosswort Bridge
1 Nantuko Monastery
1 Secluded Steppe
1 Tranquil Thicket
1 Vitu-Ghazi, the City-Tree

Of the 38 non-basic land cards listed here that have already been released, I currently play 23 of them in various EDH decks. That's 60% of this deck. There's a good handful of G & W staples from Path to Exile (now a ridiculous $6 online) to Sakura Tribe Elder, Wall of Roots, Krosan Tusker, Harmonize (another $2) and Rancor and this is before you get anywhere near more theme-driven cards like the Saproling generators, specialist lands or even the rares. Yes, I haven't mentioned a single rare from this deck yet and already you have a ton of playables!

Forgotten Ancient is another excellent multiplayer card (though again, like the Taurean Mauler, less exciting for being a Planechase reprint), Kamahl, Fist of Krosa is a house for any sort of token- or high creature-count deck like Elves and he even doubles as a rattlesnake against Wrath effects (if you keep a number of green mana open, you can respond to a Wrath of God effect by turning an opponent's lands into 1/1 creatures thus sealing their doom when the Wrath of God resolves.) Oh, he's a potential General too as he is Legendary.

Once again, this deck is for players who weren't about for all of these sets and really want to find a bunch of solid G/W staples for EDH without selling the rest of their collection. Just the Path to Exile pushes the market value of this deck well above the MSRP and the unamed commons and uncommons aren't slouches either. There's really very little that you can't play in EDH from this deck and that's a pretty big stamp of approval.

We've had a Dragon-themed deck packed full of value and a Saproling-themed deck packed full of solid G/W EDH staples, what does the Undead Apocalypse have in store for us apart from, you know, BbbrrrAAAAiiinnnsss!?



Creatures:
1 Festering Goblin
1 Dregscape Zombie
1 Reassembling Skeleton
1 Rakdos Guildmage
1 Bog Witch
1 Urborg Syphon-Mage
1 Cemetery Reaper
1 Avatar of Discord
2 Infectious Horror
1 Corpse Connoisseur
1 Shriekmaw
2 Twisted Abomination
1 Extractor Demon
1 Kaervek the Merciless
1 Avatar of Woe
1 Vampiric Dragon
1 Scion of Darkness
1 Artisan of Kozilek

Spells:

1 Reanimate
2 Rakdos Signet
1 Zombie Infestation
2 Sign in Blood
2 Terminate
1 Infest
1 Makeshift Mannequin
1 Zombify
1 Inferno Trap
1 Torrent of Souls
1 Beacon of Unrest
1 Incremental Blight
1 Bituminous Blast

Lands:

13 Swamp
7 Mountain
2 Barren Moor
2 Rakdos Carnarium

Ok, a little aside before I dive into this decklist; one card that you won't have recognised here is Reassembling Skeleton and, if you were paying attention, you should have noticed Plummet and Chandra's Outrage from the first two decks. Add in the Sorcerer's Strongbox from the last list and you have a couple of spoilers for a future set. We're pretty sure that these are all in M11 so watch out for them. The reason I didn't go into this for teh first two cards is that, really, they are not too exciting:

Plummet 1G Instant
Destroy target creature with flying

Chandra's Outrage 2RR Instant
~ deals 4 damage to target creature and 2 damage to that creatures controller

Sorcerer's Strongbox 4 Artifact
2,T: Flip a coin. If you win the flip, sacrifice ~ and draw three cards.

However, it's Reassembling Skeleton that's capturing the imagination on the forums:

Reassembling Skeleton 1B
Creature - Skeleton Warrior 1/1
1B: Return ~ from your Graveyard to the battlefield tapped.

A 1/1 for 1B is not all that exciting but at any time it's in your graveyard, for an additional 1B, you can bring it back into play tapped. At the end of your opponent's turn is usually a good time. What really has the creative juices flowing, however, is that this little monster has built in reanimation reducing the need for a cog in a combo that revolves creatures rotating out of the graveyard and onto the battlefield multiple times. Less cards means more efficiency and generally more deck-space for protection or redundancy. We'll see what this guy ends up becomming. Back to the deck we have a cornucoppia of black and red reanimation, huge beasts and generally good multiplayer cards:

The ability on Urborg Syphon-Mage, like Avatar of Discord's additinal cost, requires a discard to work. Generally the discard is a disadvantage but when you're discarding a monster to be reanimated by Artisan of Kozilek, Reanimate, Makeshift Mannequin, Zombify, Torrent of Souls or Beacon of Unrest or the damage trigger on Scion of Darkness, well, you can probably live with that kind of "disadvantage". And when the card you're discarding is a Shriekmaw, Twisted Abomination, Extractor Demon, Kaervek the Merciless, Avatar of Woe, Vampiric Dragon or Scion of Darkness, well all the more reason to take advantage of and dump those guys right in there. If you don't have them in hand Corpse Connoisseur gets them directly into the graveyard for you.

Need more discard outlets? How about Zombie Infestation? Your Cemetery Reaper boosts the Zombies you make and can scavenge the various graveyards around the table to deny opponents graveyard resouces while building your own army. Oh and you also have some very playable utility in Rakdos Signet, Sign in Blood, Terminate, Infest & Bituminous Blast. That's easily 23 EDH playable cards, some in multiples, that feature here. It's a beast as it stands and cannibalised for B/r EDH decks it's easy to see a huge number of very playable cards. You're getting reanimation, control, zombies, beaters, this is just an excellent product. There's even a Dragon, if that's your thing!


In terms of monetary value? Just the uncommon Reanimate alone is worth $7. Avatar of Woe (I still can't believe she's in here, this is so excellent!!) brings our total to $15 and almost any one of the remaining rares brings us to within touching distance of the MSRP. That's 3-4 out of 40 non basic-land cards in this deck. This is the skeleton that an excellent B/r (or mono-B) EDH deck will be built and, guess what, there's an extra bonus round: We get a free general! Kaervek the Merciless!

Wow, how can Assembling the Doomsday Machine even hope to follow that? So far we've had R/G Dragons, G/W tokens, B/R Reanimator, now it's the turn of BLUE!! Or, maybe I should whisper "blue" because that's one colour that is not getting the love in Archenemy [strange as Blue seems to be the colour that everyone hates and loves to beat up on!] Assembling the Doomsday Machine is a WUB deck with a very strong artifact theme:


CREATURES
1 Metallurgeon
1 Ethersworn Shieldmage
1 Juggernaut
1 Lodestone Golem
1 Synod Centurion
1 Leonin Abunas
2 Sanctum Gargoyle
1 Master Transmuter
1 Architects of Will
1 Duplicant
1 Magister Sphinx
1 Memnarch
1 Sundering Titan

SPELLS
1 Everflowing Chalice
2 AEther Spellbomb
1 Synod Sanctum
1 Azorius Signet
1 Dimir Signet
1 Lightning Greaves
1 Sun Droplet
1 Batwing Brume
2 Agony Warp
1 Obelisk of Esper
1 Thunderstaff
1 Fieldmist Borderpost
1 Mistvein Borderpost
1 Unmake
1 Skullcage
1 Sorcerer's Strongbox
1 March of the Machine
1 Unbender Tine
1 Spin into Myth
1 Dreamstone Hedron

LANDS
7 Plains
10 Island
5 Swamp
2 Terramorphic Expanse

Em, wow much? What this deck lacks in Archenemy synergy in comparison to the Reanimator deck (I'd put this on par with the first two above) it more than makes up in power-artifact rares. If you've not been keeping count, each deck had 8 rares, generally creatures (the G/W has a rare land and the reanimator has the rare and excellent Beacon of Unrest) this is the case again here with 7 of the 8 sporting a P/T:

1 Lodestone Golem
1 Leonin Abunas
1 Master Transmuter
1 Duplicant
1 Magister Sphinx
1 Memnarch
1 Sundering Titan
1 March of the Machines

Now, when I say "power-artifact rares", for once I'm not talking about their monetary value because this deck actually lags behind in the value stakes: the 8 rares don't meet the MSRP and the uncommons & commons, while decent enough in this deck, aren't going to empty the pocket. This is one product where you get only a little more than what you're paying for and adding the packaging and Scheme cards. What this deck does offer you is the chance to buy everything together in one packet rather than shopping about to find individual cards. Another thing about this deck is that it pulls from the latest two blocks quite heavily, so new players who have been playing since the beginning of Shards of Alara, may even have some of these cards, slightly less incentive again.


What you do get however, you can play in EDH, from the rares at least and a few of the remaining cards too. In fact, two of these cards are at the centre of numerous complaints about their power level (Sundering Titan & Magister Sphinx) and a third, Memnarch is the subject or repeated petitions to be allowed as a general, currently to no avail. His exclusion from the ranks of general don't decrease his potency, he can completely dominate a table given enough support. All in all the deck has great cards but is not in the same league as Bring about the Undead Apocalypse.

All in all, each of these deck has something for EDH players looking for specific cards to fill out their decks and a whole lot more for newer players who don't have a huge collection and are seriously looking into getting into EDH without spending a fortune. Quite apart from their value to me personally, I've a decent sized collection, one or two newer players in my group will be looking to pick up one or more of these "EDH base packs" as the bones of their first steps into EDH deckbuilding. To date only the "Premium Deck: Slivers" has offered this step up into EDH though in a much more restricted manner (you have to like Slivers!) Not being able to choose Memnarch as your general tarnishes the obvious desire by Wizards to include a playable Legend in each deck, but he is playable (and strong!) and the other 3 are very valid candidates to lead your EDH army.

Product rating: Top Banana!! Even if the "Scheme"/Archenemy side of the product flops totally (and I don't think it will) this is a quality, value-for-money product that casual players everywhere will appreciate. Good job!

So that's the decks. What about the actual product Archenemy and it's relation to EDH? I touched briefly on the possibility of making my "Ta-Daa!!" (Thada Adel) deck into a dedicated EDH Archenemy deck. Like Planechance, I can really see the possibilities that Archenemy can bring to eth EDH experience but, as yet, that only the theory. I look forward to the practise!